Wasteland Sheriff
by ColonelJuice
Summary: A story of a vault dweller who became a hero to the people of the wasteland. His growth from that fateful tenth birthday until the day he purified the wasteland. Rated M for all the right reasons.
1. Born to be Wild

Note to all: This is a work of fiction that attempts to make a story out of the game Fallout 3. Since it is written by someone who is in no way affiliated with Bethesda or any other company run by video game gods (All hail Bethesda!), it may contain both spoilers and significant deviations from the actual game's storyline. Yeah, I know, some of the stuff in this story either doesn't or can't ever happen in the game. I just decided to use fallout 3 to write a story that I felt would be cool. It contains adult content and is likely to offend some people, including both the weak-willed and those who imagine the world would be a wonderful place after a nuclear holocaust. It is also really long, as I have a problem when it comes to summarizing things. This long disclaimer should reflect that. If you don't like any of these things, don't read anymore of this. All comments, questions, suggestions, criticism/critiques, and hate mail can be directed to the reviews, PM, or my profile's email if you want a quicker response.

Basically, I was sort of feeling disappointed at the lack of interaction the game gives you during the protagonist's early years, so I decided to write my own version of the tenth birthday of a character I named Michael. I always imagined the guy to be some sort of hero even before the day he exited the vault, as no normal vault dweller would survive a day in the wasteland, even with Megaton so close. So here's my story about an important moment in the life of Michael, eventual hero of the wasteland.

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Chapter 1 – Born to be wild

Ten years old. Big deal. Michael had spent his entire childhood in Vault 101, and would more than likely be spending the rest of his years there as well. The magic age simply meant that he was finally going to be getting his first work assignments, his first pip-boy, and maybe even a little respect from the older denizens of the vault. What he hadn't expected was lunchtime to be transformed into a party from his best friend Amata. Perhaps the fact that the lights were off in the room should have been a hint, but the burst of light and cheers of "Surprise!" was enough for him to realize that he'd be getting cake with lunch today.

"Happy birthday!"

"Happy birthday!"

"Happy birthday!"

"Happy birthday!"

"Happy birthday!"

"I can't believe this! Thanks guys!" Though about half of the people in the room were at least two decades older than him, that was just the way the vault was, and he was happy to see most of the people he could call friends had managed to show up. Officer Gomez, who had been teaching Michael everything he knew about self-defense. Lucy Palmer, the old lady who had always acted like a grandmother to him. Stanley, the old engineer who seemed to keep the vault running all by himself, while even squeezing in enough time to show Michael the maintenance conduits and air vents that always gave him the edge whenever the kids played hide and seek. And of course, his father James, who was responsible for every healing miracle in the vault. Looking around, he noticed that only some of the kids in the same pregnancy cycle as him were here, with Freddie, Christine, and Susie all missing. Amata more than made up for that however.

"Ha Ha! We surprised you, didn't we?" said Amata. She took one of the ridiculous party hats everyone else was wearing and placed it on her friend's head. Despite being only ten and nine years old respectively, Michael and Amata had been best friends for years, even with the jeering they got from other kids: "Girls are icky!" "Boys are smelly!", as well as an increasing hatred from her father Alphonse, known best as the Overseer by the residents of the vault.

"You bet! I never thought for one second that you would do all this for me! Thanks!"

"It wasn't all me, plenty of other people helped."

"But only a friend like you would manage to get everyone together like this."

Amata blushed. "Uh... Hey, guess what I got you for your birthday?"

"No idea...maybe an assault rifle?"

She laughed. "You're obsessed with those old movies, you know that? I know you'll be a security officer someday. Anyway, how about an issue of Grognak the Barbarian? Number 14!"

"Cool! You know you just completed my collection, right? This is the greatest... besides a magnum!"

"Of course! Go grab the first piece of cake before everyone eats the whole thing."

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Alphonse Almodovar was easily the harshest person in the vault. Maybe the other kids made fun of his name when he was younger, maybe his mother dropped him when he was a baby, or maybe he was accidentally exposed to radiation from the reactor. Whatever the reason, he had a very low tolerance for anything that wasn't critical to the vault's survival. A young boy in particular named Michael easily managed to upset him on several occasions.

What angered Alphonse so much was that Amata and Michael had become so taken with each other. He knew Michael was most definitely his father's son, and bound to be a challenger to the normal, safe life here in the vault. That was an influence he hoped to keep away from his daughter. She was the only one he could one day trust to run the vault after him; she needed to be ready to enforce the rules set down by the Vault-Tec corporation.

Michael's offenses were numerous: insubordination, trespassing, and the occasional fight were to be expected of any young child locked in an underground facility. However, he had one particular note in his record that no one in the vault could match. It happened about a year and a half ago....

_The sound wasn't loud, but it was more than enough to awaken the Overseer. He crawled out of bed, rubbed his eyes, and opened them to find that his daughter was standing in front of him with both eyes wide open._

_"Did you hear that daddy?"_

_"Yes, stay here while I go take a look." Quickly stepping out the door, he proceeded past the other recently awaken residents and followed the smell of smoke down one level. Somehow he was only half surprised to find Michael at the center of the mess, but he had no clue as to how the heavy security door that had been stuck closed for three days was now open._

_Officer Mack approached the overseer with a shaking voice and a wild look in his eyes. "You're not going to believe this sir. The kid hacked the lock on the high-security storage room, stole a chunk of blasting explosives, and managed to lay the perfect charge on the door here. He opened it flawlessly, no damage to the door at all, just blew the hydraulic seals."_

_Given that the boy was only eight, the overseer sent him back to his quarters with orders to report to his office first thing in the morning. Unable to sleep, he instead focused on having a speech planned out by morning. Unfortunately for the overseer, the profanity-laced tirade never came to pass, as two men arrived shortly before Michael, each with their own plea for mercy on the boy. _

_Stanley first arrived in the overseer's office only five minutes after the overseer himself had unlocked the door and sat down. Stanley explained that he had told the inquisitive child the day before how he was going to try blowing open the door as a measure of last resort, and that Michael was only a kid trying to help. Officer Gomez, who had been the first officer on scene that night, showed up mere moments after Stanley was done talking. He claimed that this act showed how Michael was a prodigy, and that the best way to stop repeat incidents was not harsh punishment, but rather giving him some kind of one on one training outside the classroom, even with GOAT exams so many years away._

_With two of the vault's best people on his case, he felt he had no choice but to grant their request and assign a more lenient punishment: forty hours of probationary service. It was a decision he came to regret, as the obvious penalty for stealing and blowing things up was working for the security officers. He formed friendships quickly with most of the officers, and their attitudes toward the young delinquent slowly turned around. They made him an apprentice of sorts, teaching him the basics of combat and firearms, not to mention what he didn't already know about explosives. A comment by one officer a few weeks prior to the birthday party infuriated Alphonse, as the usually stern officer Kendall had said "Six years from now, I know that kid is gonna start out as a new officer."_

"I'll be damned if that kid is going to carry a weapon in my vault, especially with my daughter constantly hanging on to him" said the overseer to his empty room. Showing up at this little brat's birthday was the last thing that he wanted to do, but it was tradition for the overseer to directly present every young child with his or her own pip-boy 3000 on their tenth birthday. As well, Amata had been begging him to come to the party, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive another stake between the two of them because of this little nuisance.

Walking down the hallway and through the door without so much as a smile on his face, he interrupted every conversation in the room with his neatly prepared speech. "Congratulations young man. I don't have to tell you how special today is. Down here in the vault, turning ten means you begin your official responsibilities, and for that you'll need this. Your very own pip-boy 3000. Get used to it, taking it on or off will take about fifteen minutes, and should only be done by an authorized technician. You'll be receiving your first work assignment tomorrow, be sure to sync up with the terminal in your quarters."

With no other words, he handed over the pip-boy, turned to several other adults, and began yet another of his lecturing conversations that had absolutely nothing to do with the birthday party. Maybe it wasn't what his daughter had in mind, but he had shown up, and he'd be damned if he was going to change his mind about a child that caused so much trouble, even for his own daughter.

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"Sorry about that Mike. He just doesn't seem to care about anything, don't take it personal."

"Don't worry Amata. But seriously, you know I don't like to be called Mike. I'd rather have your father beat me with a pipe."

"Double sorry Michael. Come on, let's grab some cake already."

As they walked over to the counter, the robot Andy announced "Attention everyone! It is time to cut the cake!" To the horror of all watching, he raised one of his arms, powered up his buzz saw attachment, and began to bring it to bear on the cake. A suddenly silenced room only echoed a single protest of "Andy! No!" from Amata before the saw splattered the cake over most of the room.

The room was deathly still. Andy managed to utter "I'm terribly sorry sir" in his unique British accent before most of the room burst into laughter, including the young birthday boy. Everyone turned back to their conversations as Stanley said "Andy, next time you cut a cake, use a smaller blade please! Sorry about that Michael, I thought I had all the bugs fixed in his cuisine programming."

"No need for that Stanley. I know you're overworked on most of the vault's maintenance. Plus, seeing as how you're in charge of most of the equipment, I get the feeling that you're the reason I got the 3000 A model. You always said they were more durable and reliable, right? I've got the best pip-boy in the vault thanks to you."

"Not to mention the best hat!" Stanley said, as he whipped out of nowhere a pre-war baseball cap. Before Michael could say anything, Stanley had knocked the party hat off Michael's head, placed it on his head, and said "Play ball! Maybe I'll find you a mitt in the storerooms for your next birthday."

"Thanks Stanley! One question though, how do I download movies to this thing?"

"Clint Eastwood and Rambo will be the death of you" he said with a smile. "I'll show you later, get back to the party you little rascal."

Amata had managed to wander off and was trying to get her dad to join in the festivities, so Michael decided to wander around a bit. He got absolutely no intelligent conversation out of Butch and Wally, but at least Paul had managed to cough up a happy birthday when the other two weren't looking. Amata had strangely forgotten to invite Susie or Christine for reasons unknown to his immature mind, so his choices of fellow children to talk to were virtually expended. Eventually he found himself at the table where the overseer was. He saw the look of doom coming from him, and decided it would be best to not wander past and try to talk with Amata. Trying his best to be polite, he struck up a conversation with the overseer, even knowing he would more than likely be baited into a word fight. "Hey, thanks for coming, I know you're a busy guy. Did you help Amata with this?"

"No, I have much more important matters to attend to. I am honestly surprised that I have spent so long in this room so far. You really puzzle me as to how you can attract so much attention from my daughter, considering all the trouble you constantly get into."

"Hey, what can I say Alphonse? I'm a charming guy, with an "explosive" personality." Michael made sure to purposely rhyme the words 'say' and 'Alphons-ay' in a sing-song fashion, all while displaying the typical scoundrel smile he always used. Purposely reminding the man who ruled the vault with an iron fist about an incident that involved breaking and entering, theft, and high explosives might seem foolish to some. Teasing him about his name would probably be describable as a death wish, given how no one in the vault, even Amata, addressed him by his first name. However, this particular ten year old had managed to get away with a lot over the past few years, and it had given him a feeling of invincibility when dealing with the overseer.

He snapped back to reality as the Overseer began to harshly address him. "Very funny Michael, but remember that what I decide happens in this vault, and I can assure you that you're one offense from being separated from the rest of the vault, most especially my daughter, for the foreseeable future."

Michael did his best to hide both his anger and fear. Though only eight years old as of that night, the overseer's first idea for punishing him that morning way back had been several weeks in the vault security office's detention cell. He sheepishly smiled as he thought to himself "Dad's right, I've got to stop picking a fight with him. He's got way more ammo." Wandering back over to some of the other party guests seemed like a good idea. One table away was the perfect distraction, Mrs. Palmer, also know to Michael as Grandma Palmer.

"Hey grandma! Thanks for showing up."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, be it radioactive or clean as the day before the bombs dropped. I have a present you might like!"

"Oh, you didn't have to get me anything! You've been doing so much for me already."

"Fiddlesticks! What ten year old doesn't like a present. Anyway, I baked a whole batch of my special sweetrolls yesterday. I traded most of them for a few work credits, but I saved you one. And I bet you'll like it even more now that Andy demolished your cake."

"All right! I was a little hungry. Maybe I'll split it with Amata."

"My my my! You're so young, but I can tell one day you two will be the perfect couple."

Michael made a fake groaning sound with a smile, and took three steps away before Butch stepped in front of him. "I'm hungry, and the stupid robot destroyed the cake. Give me that!"

A quick look around showed that no one, not even Mrs. Palmer, had even noticed Butch. Michael thought it over for a second, before finally saying "You know what? This is mine. Fuck off."

Now although Butch had not caught anyone's ear, a ten year old swearing was enough to catch a few people's attention, including a giggling Amata and a rather angry Overseer. After a few seconds, the words "You gonna just take that man?" came from Wally, and Butch decided to say "You're gonna be sorry punk!" before swinging at him.

Butch had next to no idea what he was doing, while Michael had managed to learn quite a bit about hand to hand combat after the training the officers had given him. A duck and somersault placed him several meters away from and behind Butch, where he then proceeded to set his sweetroll on a table and place himself in a boxer's stance before Butch could even turn around.

Butch yelled some kind of crazed war cry and ran toward Michael. At the last second, Gomez stepped in between the two and Butch ran headfirst into the officer's security vest. Impacting the ceramic plates was too much for Butch, and he crumpled to the floor sobbing. Grabbing Butch off the ground by the arm, Gomez said "Just what do you think you're doing? Try that again and your mother will hear about this."

"No she won't." Michael quickly responded. Butch had made him mad, and he was more than ready to step down a level. "His mom will be so drunk that she won't understand a word you say."

"You bastard!" Butch yelled, struggling against Gomez's grip. Gomez quickly pulled him out into the hall and gave him one last warning before both stepped back into the room, an angry grimace on Butch and a strangely mellow face on officer Gomez. "Wow, I can't believe what I just saw!" said Amata, who had somehow managed to sneak behind Michael during the incident. "Did he even get a chance to hurt you?"

"No, but he did give me a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't keep this sweetroll to myself, maybe I should share it with someone.....someone who did something nice for me already......"

Amata quickly snatched it off the table, ripped it in half, and handed the bigger chunk to Michael. "Alright, now we're even. But promise me you won't beat him after this party is over."

Michael raised his hand as if he were on trial and said "I solemnly swear to do no harm to Butch today. But no promises about tomorrow."

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James was the first person Amata had told about her idea for a surprise party. Obviously he wanted to give his son a great party every year, but something special was in store for Michael this time around. Several months ago, his assistant Jonas had found a BB gun in one of the vault storerooms, and after a little restoration it was in perfect shape, minus the spring in the loading mechanism. Fortunately, James had the perfect idea for how to acquire such an item.

James' days before his son had been born had easily made him the most seasoned man in the vault. He had learned a great many things, some of which the other vault residents wouldn't be happy to know about. Given the increasing tendency for Michael to get in trouble with Butch, it seemed a good idea to take away the switchblade Butch always paraded around with. A simple two minute conversation in a hallway with young Butch about his next check up was more than what James needed to pickpocket the switchblade, which turned out to contain the perfect replacement spring for the BB gun.

Though Jonas had told James that he was worried about Michael possessing any kind of weapon given his fascination with old movies and the vault security guards, James decided that it was a perfect way to introduce his son to a gun. Considering that Michael would one day most likely be a security guard himself, he thought that it would be best to teach him respect for the deadly power he one day might hold. He grew worried, however, seeing how easily his son could be provoked. Fortunately, officer Gomez had faster reflexes than him and had stopped Butch. He had seen Michael training with the officer and knew that the young child might be able to take on bigger opponents, to say nothing of people his own age. The palm strikes, chokeholds, and body locks he knew could easily put Butch in the infirmary, which would have likely been the last straw for the overseer.

A burst of static from the room's intercom panel was enough to rouse him from his thoughts. "Hey doc, are you there? I've got everything set up down here."

"Yes Jonas, we'll be right down." There was no more time for pondering, it was time for a decision. "Michael, come over here for a minute." And there it was. He was encouraging his son to begin a life of violence. "What am I saying?" he thought to himself. "He's a ten year old boy. It's a BB gun. What am I worrying about?"

"Hey dad, what's going on?"

Once again pulled from his thoughts by the surrounding world, he told his son "Why don't you head down to the lower level. Jonas and I have a surprise for you. I'll be down in a minute, go on without me."

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His dad had always been an introspective sort, so this event was no real difference from how he normally acted. Mike walked out into the corridor without a second thought. Unfortunately for him, Beatrice was at the end of the hallway, and there was no other way around her. With a forced grin on his face, he walked toward the mentally unstable lady.

"Oh hello dear, I'm sorry I'm late to your party."

"It's OK, I have to step out for a moment anyway, so... see you!"

"Wait, let me give you your present now!" She handed him a folded piece of paper, which he slowly opened. Beatrice was well known throughout the vault for being eccentric, to say the least, so it really wasn't much of a surprise to see the paper contained a rather long poem which seemed to have almost nothing to do with his birthday.

"Thank you, I will treasure this always" he said through the obviously fake grin on his face. It was almost sad for him to see her in this state. Most of the other kids made fun of her, and Butch would sometimes even try to confuse her with odd questions. His dad had said that she was never quite right when she was younger, and her worsening condition was what happened to some people when they became old. He responded "But isn't there a cure? Something you can do?" James' response had simply been "Every problem has multiple solutions, but sometimes none of them are good solutions." Little did the man know how this phrase would comfort his son one day.

Running along the main corridor, he stopped at the stairs just in time to hear the overseer speaking with another of the security guards one level up. "Give them a few more minutes, then clear them out and send everyone back to work. The only reason I even stopped in is because my daughter is so taken with that brat." Shrugging his shoulders for no one, he brushed off yet another harsh comment from the overseer and started down the stairs. He ended up finding Jonas down near the reactor, quickly closing a crate he had been looking into. "What are you doing down here? Kids aren't allowed on this level."

Jonas had been his dad's assistant for years, and Michael trusted him like a brother. He knew that Jonas was joking around. "Aw, cut it out Jonas. I'm ten now, which is definitely old enough to walk down some steps. Besides, I heard the intercom. Dad sent me down here, and now I'm getting some kind of surprise."

"True, true, and true, but wait a moment. I think your dad will want to be here."

Just then, as if summoned by the very words Jonas had just spoken, James walked down the steps, around the corner, and right over to Jonas. Grabbing the handle on the crate, he asked "Are you ready for your surprise?", to which Michael responded "Dad, I'm ready. Open it!"

Opening the crate slowly, James reached inside and quickly produced an item Michael had thought he might never get to see, let alone have. "Ta-da! Your very own BB gun!" James said, presenting the rifle to him. A slack jawed Michael only stared at the present, unable to think about reaching out and grabbing it. Since he was young, he had wanted to get his hands on one of the guns in the vault. This might not have had the same punch as a 10mm pistol, but it was a gun, and that was all a violence-obsessed child needed before saying in a barely audible voice Reaching out at the speed of a snail, he managed to utter "Th-Thank you! I can't believe this! This is awesome!"

"And that's not all" said Jonas, swinging open the door behind him. It appeared to be just another dimly lit storeroom, but the other side of the room held several crude swiveling targets mounted on poles. "We decided setting this up was the perfect way to keep you from shooting that gun in the hallways. The overseer probably wouldn't like this, so stay down here when you're shooting."

The sight of the targets snapped Michael out of his daze. "Sweet!" he yelled, seizing the gun as he ran into the room. Suddenly stopping halfway to the makeshift shooting range, he sighted the gun briefly before letting off a shot into each target. PING! PING! PING! Unfortunately, this new noise awoke a radroach that had been sleeping under a pile of junk in the corner of the room. The vault was not perfectly sealed, and several irradiated roaches, or radroaches as the vault citizens had dubbed them, occasionally managed to find their way in. Unlike normal roaches from before the great war, this particular species grew to the size of a house cat, causing major problems on occasion, especially when a person was alone and unarmed.

Officer Gomez always told him how he had run into a radroach when he was only nine, and how he held the insect off with a chair until another child had gotten the attention of a security officer. He often told Michael how at that moment he knew he was going to become a security officer. Since Michael was much better armed than the young Gomez, and had already convinced himself that he was the perfect vault guardian, he had the radroach dead in his sights before either adult could utter the words "Look out! It's a radroach!"

While the two adults were busy reaching for any weapon they could find, Michael let off a shot directly into what he thought was probably the creature's forehead. The hiss from the roach, as well as the yellowish liquid flowing out of the small wound, was more than enough to encourage Michael to fire three more shots into the radroach, causing its legs to give way as it fell to the floor. With one final twitch from it wings, the insect let out a dying cry before seizing up in the strangely quick version of rigor mortis that these roaches possessed. Turning around to find Jonas holding a section of pipe and his dad holding a sledgehammer, he declared loudly "OK, I totally destroyed that radroach. Now, what else do I get to kill?"

Both adults heaved a sigh of relief, and placed their weapons back where they had found them. "You better not say anything like that near the overseer" said James, "or he'll know something's up and search your quarters for that gun. Come on, let's get a picture in to remember this day by. Jonas, would you do me and my son the honor?"

"Sure doc." He picked up a camera off one of the shelves, which somehow was loaded with film and in perfect order despite the coating of dust on most of the objects in the rest of the room. Had his father really planned this all in advance? Had he maybe even trapped the radroach on purpose, knowing that the best thing that could possibly happen would be for him to get a chance to really use the gun? Such questions were quickly suppressed by his father's hand on his shoulder and the camera's flash.

At that point, he was too excited anyway to really care one way or the other. He was ten years old. He had gotten a pip-boy, a baseball cap, and a BB gun for his birthday. He had bragging rights when it came to officer Gomez's story. He had even managed to impress Amata and mouth off to Butch with no consequences whatsoever. Today was definitely going to be on his list of best days for years to come.

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Duh duh duh! An extremely long rendition of one day in the life of the vault dweller named Michael. How will things turn out for his teenage self in the coming years? Either move on to the next chapter, assuming I've already written it, or wait a minute and go make a sandwich. Your choice. Long stories usually mean you'll need a snack.


	2. Set for Life

Note to all: read the first chapter's disclaimer if you care, otherwise just yell at me through the reviews, through PM, or my profile's email. If you really need a repeat, this is M rated for a reason, including some violence, language, and Michael/Amata activity. The first chapter was tame in comparison.

OK, so I got really high on myself and liked my first chapter so much, I wrote another even longer chapter to go with it. This deals mostly with the teenage years of the vault dweller named Michael, centering somewhat around the day he takes the GOAT exam with every other teenager in the vault. Will teenage hormones affect his life in the vault? Will his ambitions of becoming a security officer be dashed by bad test scores? Or will the overseer shove him in maintenance regardless of his performance? Read on to find out.

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Chapter 2 – Set for Life

Michael usually wasn't the nervous sort. Living in a underground vault, protected from the horrors of a nuclear war, made life relatively easy in comparison to what it probably was like on the surface. He was a sixteen year old in his prime, he had become a real fighter thanks to the tutelage of several security officers, and the friendships he had managed to forge meant he was somewhat protected from even the overseer's wrath. But today offered an enemy a roundhouse kick or a friendly smile couldn't defeat. It was the day of the GOAT. Having absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese new year or anything like that, the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test was a once only exam that permanently determined how you were going to spend the rest of your days in the vault. There were numerous positions that needed to be filled by his generation, ranging from shift supervisor all the way down to waste management specialist. He only had one shot, and his answers on a few papers would put him in a single job for the next fifty or so years.

That morning, he was jarred awake by his alarm in the middle of quite possibly the worst dream he ever had. Though his memory of the dream had already half faded by the time his conscious mind had tried to grab a hold of it, the image of Butch holding Amata in his arms, both of them laughing while he scrubbed the floor, was permanently etched into his mind. He tried to distract himself with the thought of one day being a security officer, helping and protecting the people in the vault, but he knew that even the exceptional skills he had demonstrated since he was young might not be enough to get the overseer's approval for his dream job.

He sat up and leaned over the side of the bed. Six years is a long time, and many things had changed for our young hero. He'd managed to mostly become friends with Wally and Paul, but their membership in Butch's new gang, the Tunnel Snakes, had rendered his previous efforts virtually pointless. Freddie had started to resent him, but he wasn't sure if it was because of what he had with Amata or the fact that Freddie's father, officer Gomez, had been spending so much time teaching Michael things. Amata had begun to grow into a woman, one of stunning physical beauty in his opinion, and his friendship with Amata was slowly turning into puppy love. Exactly how she felt was as of yet unknown to him, as he could not think of a smooth way to ask her such a question without sounding like some kind of combination of a stalker and a jerk.

Even the vault security officers, most of whom had previously liked him, were starting to give him the cold shoulder. Several years ago, he had even been deputized a junior vault security officer, a title that was technically meaningless but had meant a lot to him, as the officers had used it as an excuse to continue training him despite the quiet disapproval of the overseer. However, a few of the officers he had been friends with in his youth had begun to resent him. His constant presence was not always welcomed, especially when other vault residents would point at him and say things like "Hey, did you hear about Michael? He took down Gomez and Mack at the same time in the gym!" or "Don't ever think about trying to make fun of Michael. I hear he's even better than the officers when it comes to the shooting range."

One thing had not changed however, and that was the attitude he received daily from Alphonse. Sure he had started to call him 'Overseer', sure he had scaled back his cocky attitude and midnight escapades, sure he had mostly kept the fighting to friendly sparring matches in the gym, but nothing seemed to be enough. Maybe being friends with his daughter Amata meant permanent wrath, maybe he'd be assigned a lousy job because of it, but he simply could not help himself. Amata was perfect.

There were other girls in the vault too, but they simply didn't add up in Michael's eyes. Susie Mack was hot and all, but she was so light-headed having a conversation with her was about as much fun as scrubbing the floor. A one-night stand wasn't really an option either. The rumors said that she'd slept with at least a dozen other guys, and she certainly seemed to confirm that whenever anyone tried to hit on her. A "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" wasn't exactly what he wanted anyway. Christine Kendall was nice looking too, but was always preoccupied with herself, in some ways making her even worse a person to talk to than Susie. To put it bluntly, she was a self-centered bitch who seemed to care for no one, not even her own mother, father, or sister.

Given that the rest of the vault's women were at least eight years younger or older than Michael thanks to forced birth control and the standard vault pregnancy cycles, it seemed to him that the only girl he could even consider being with was Amata. But no matter how he tried, he was unable to talk to her about anything even remotely related to feelings. For years, it had always been the same things: conversations full of secrets they would tell no one else, always sitting next to each other in class and at lunch, hanging out in the rec room all the time, and even the occasional slumber party when they were younger......much younger. He saw no way of changing that now.

Slowly rising out of bed, he used the thought of him and Amata together to banish his earlier dream. Whether or not he'd talk to her anytime soon about his feelings was an unknown factor, but an early morning and the thought of her body was enough to give him a seriously 'hard' dilemma. Fortunately he had woken early and his father had left for work, so he had some extra time to spend in the shower. The soap wasn't the only thing he had plans to hold onto tightly....

Stepping out of the shower thirty minutes later, both clean and temporarily sated, his thoughts started to drift toward a life outside the vault. Sometimes he wondered what things were like before the war, with so many options and so much else a person could do. Most of the details he'd managed to fish out of the vault's database made twenty-first century life seem like a paradise, for people his age in particular. A teenager could go to college to do just about anything, then they could move almost anywhere in the world to find an opening for their dream job. The government didn't force you to become a chef or a repairman; anyone could do any job if they had the right education. And those were just the things he had managed to find on the life of pre-war teenagers! These thoughts were more than enough to make him daydream occasionally about a life outside the vault, even one in a nuclear wasteland.

Though the idea of surviving in a nuclear desert was problematic, the first thought that entered his head was that he only needed one thing to turn the wasteland into paradise: Amata. Smacking himself in the forehead, he thought to himself "What am I? A hopeless romantic? Why don't I ever think about Christine, or Susie, or even Gloria? She's old and married, but still plenty hot. Well, not compared to Amata anyway." He smacked himself again. "Again with Amata! How have I not noticed this before?" There was no vault psychologist, and he didn't have another best friend to confide in. He was stuck this way, but he wasn't sure that was a bad thing. He reasoned that the best thing he could do was visit his father at the infirmary before the test, hang out with Amata until the clock struck nine, and hope that a miracle or two would happen today.

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This day meant as much to the overseer as it did to the people who were taking the GOAT. Given the vault's small population and the specialized workforce needed to maintain it, he was well aware of how important it would be to assign the highest scoring candidates to the fields in which they were needed most. However, this time the test would include a single person that he had been watching closely over the past years.

The last six years had shown him no end to the annoyance that Michael presented. He had continued to devote much of his free time to studying hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and even explosives with the security officers. Officer Gomez in particular seemed to like teaching Michael every single thing that a security officer would ever need to know, be it to stop a drunken citizen from assaulting his wife or repelling irradiated mutants from a blown open vault door. The worst part was that he was the one of the best students in the vault, achieving above average in nearly all his classes. Combined with the fact that he stood up to that moronic gang of "tunnel snakes"instead of trying to join them, most of the vault had changed their mind about him.

However, it was obvious to him and several other officials within the vault that Michael was a serious problem. The little punk was always talking about how they needed to prepare for the day when they would open the vault. He tried to convince other residents that they should study the vault database, stock specific supplies for a possible expedition, or even learn the same combat skills he had been practicing. The only solid support he had was from the younger members of the vault, but over the last few years, he had managed to convince a significant number of residents that it might be a good idea to at least send some kind of reconnaissance team outside. His thoughts drifted back to the proposal Michael had come to him with a few months back....

_A knock on his door was a rarity for the overseer. Most people in the vault didn't come to him with problems; he went to them to correct their errors. "Come in." Michael was the last person he expected to want to talk with him, but he decided there was no other option but to let the boy speak. "What is this about?"_

_"I wanted to talk to you about opening the vault."_

_"That is not an option. Did you have anything else to say or are you just wasting my time?"_

_"Look sir, I know that you don't like me, but at least hear me out. It's coming on two hundred years since the vault was sealed. At the very least, we need to see if the environment has improved. We'll all eventually go crazy if we never open that door, I mean how long are you going to drug a quarter of the people in the vault because of depression? Just knowing a few things about the outside world could calm everyone's nerves for years, maybe even decades. Also, everyone knows that we've been jury-rigging failing components for decades, and scavenging replacement parts or even contacting other vaults would greatly improve our chances of extending the life of critical systems, not to mention relieving the supply shortages we have."_

_"I'm not talking about forcing everyone out the front door or conducting a survey of the entire continent. A simple team of a few individuals with hazard suits could bring back a wealth of data in just a few hours. From there you can make a decision about longer trips or even use the information we gather to prove to the rest of the vault that the door must be re-sealed. Wearing some blank suits with no vault symbols would ensure that in case of capture by any kind of hostile life, be it savages or mutants, no evidence would lead them back to the vault. I'm volunteering to do this despite the possible dangers, and I know that several other people would likely jump at the chance. Maybe you could use this as an excuse to get rid of me, eh?" he said with a slight grin._

_Alphonse's facial expression didn't change at all. "I am the overseer, and I already told you my decision. We're safe here, protected, living a life of luxury even in comparison to most people before the war. We are in no danger due to any kind of system failure, and the only shortages we have are of the more exotic items that are only wanted, not needed. We are in danger, however, of letting radiation or life forms mutated by it into the vault. Remember how few adults care about the outside world. Everyone goes through this phase when they're younger, but soon enough you'll see it's to everyone's benefit to keep that door closed."_

_"I understand your reasons sir, and I agree that staying inside is best. I don't want to leave, but we really don't have much of a choice. The ultimate argument I have for you is this: how long? How long will it be before we are forced to open that door? The only thing we can really rely on is the reactor, considering that it was supposed to last indefinitely. For Christ's sake, almost half the secondary systems were rated by Vault-Tec to last only ten years. It probably won't come to that anytime soon, but even someplace as wonderful as this will eventually fall apart, with or without scavenging from the ruins outside. We can't live here forever, and everyone's fears of what's outside might keep them from being able to leave if something critical were to fail. Even if nothing happens for another two hundred years, the ability for our descendants to look up our accounts of the changed outside world might be just enough to help them survive."_

_It was hard enough to look at Michael without a scowl on his fact. The fact that this kid was actually trying to make him change his mind was absolutely infuriating. "The only good thing you've said was how I don't like you. You are a bad influence on the rest of the vault, most especially my daughter. The changes in your attitude toward her have not gone unnoticed by me, but she fortunately still thinks of you only as a friend. I am growing impatient with the two of you, and so as of now I am giving you a direct order to stop seeing her, be it as a friend or anything else. You should think less about the outside and more about your future."_

_A slight frown crossed Michael's face. "A direct order? This is a vault, not an army base. If you'd rather focus on Amata than what I have to say, listen to this. My intentions with her are nothing but honorable. I consider your daughter to be the greatest person in the vault, including you, and her friendship is the best thing I have. Save your threats for someone who cares, I'd rather be a maintenance technician for the next fifty years than a security officer living a life of solitude."_

_The kid had gone one step too far. He may not have said anything direct about being with Amata, but mouthing off was going to earn the full fury of a king with no challengers. "Maybe I'm not making myself clear. Go fuck yourself Michael. No matter what, as long as I'm still in charge, the best test scores and the greatest friendship in the vault will not be enough. Perhaps you should consider how miserable life could be if you were accused of some crime, and I were to convict you. A few years in the detention cell would shut your mouth for awhile, although it might make you want to leave the vault even more."_

_The overseer's word was law in the vault, and there was no way Michael would win a battle, verbal or physical, with him. After a strange five seconds of complete silence, the boy smiled and simply said "Thank you for your time sir. See you around." As soon as he walked out the door, Alphonse sent several emails to the personal terminals of various residents in the vault. He'd been lying through his teeth about adults caring about the outside world, and they both knew it. No one should be supporting this crazy idea, but a significant portion of the vault shared Michael's views on at least doing some kind of limited reconnaissance. The best way to deal with this was to make sure that he got no support from any of the more important residents, most notably the security officers. Michael had always been trouble, but something like this could ruin everything._

_The fact that the boy had not responded with any threats or curses, but instead a smile, illustrated the very difficult problem he was facing. The past years had made him calmer, more collected, and now a significant number of people saw him as a model youth, not the real threat that he was. "That boy had better fail his exams. I will need a hell of an excuse to keep him from becoming an officer."_

Despite his changed attitude and better behavior since his younger years, the overseer's opinion of him still stood. A combination of security training and a fierce sense of independence made a very poor vault resident in his opinion, or an even worse officer. In his world, officers were supposed to be loyal to the overseer first and the rest of the vault second. He was never going to hold any authority in his vault, not while Alphonse still breathed. "Huh!" the overseer said to an empty room. "GOAT be damned, and all the naysayers too. I don't care how well that kid does today. He'll be a garbage burner before I'll let him carry a weapon in my vault." Little did he realize that Amata had woken up early this morning, same fears ringing through her mind as Michael, and she heard every word of his short statement.

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Amata was in no way stupid, she knew that overhearing comments from her father was a blessing, but letting him know she had heard him was a curse. She waited nearly fifteen minutes without making a sound until her father left. Such a statement from her father sent shock waves through Amata. Walking into the bathroom, she realized that she had always brushed her father's comments off as nothing important until this day. She knew Michael better than anyone in the vault, perhaps even more that his father James. He was surely best set for a life protecting others, standing guard over his home and loved ones....

Loved ones. That was a confusing phrase for her. Another thing she had more than been able to read off of Michael was how much he had changed. He had reached nearly six feet tall, weighed a good two hundred fifty pounds, and was easily the greatest guy in the vault. No one else could match his grades, his bench press, or his charisma. The "tunnel snakes" were all immature to say the least, with only Paul able to hold a remotely decent conversation. Freddie Gomez was nice enough, but she had actually heard him say "I'd hit that all night long and never answer her messages the next day" behind her back when talking with Butch. Strangely enough, the both of them fell down a full flight of stairs that night and actually came to her door the next morning, clad in several casts, with a very sincere apology between the both of them. Steve Mack was always hitting on her, but the fact that he was just as stupid as his younger brother Wally, tunnel snake number two, was her first reason to put his attempts at talking to her into the category of just plain annoying. He was 24, showed blind obedience to whatever her father dictated, and that flabby body he tried to hide under his security vest were more than enough to put him out of her book.

Undressing and exposing perfect c-cup breasts as well as a nicely tanned body (Vault-Tec sun lamps were in short supply and high demand, but she was able to manipulate her father for at least this one thing), she stepped into the shower and began to think about her relationship, or lack thereof, with Michael. Obviously her father would never approve, short of forcing a lobotomy on him. Most of the other people in the vault probably wouldn't mind, except for Butch, considering how often he decided to make various vulgar remarks around her. Turning on the water and wetting her silky hair, she thought about how much things could change with just a few words between them. He wasn't exactly perfect, but he came close. He was definitely the person she like the best in the vault, even more so than her father. While rubbing the synthetic soap over herself, she managed to accidentally brush the side of her labia, and a jolt awoke her out of her morning daze. She laid back against the side of the shower and began to slowly trace a circle around her womanhood.

If masturbation was any indication of how good sex would be, Amata sometimes wondered if waiting until any kind of marriage was even possible for her. She knew that half the men in the vault would jump at the chance to do the dirty dance with her, but such an idea repulsed her. Maybe she was a hopeless romantic, but the idea of intimacy with someone who didn't care for her was a huge turnoff for her. Gradually inserting her forefinger inside her, she quickly ran into the opposition she felt even more conflicted about than her feelings toward Michael or her father's attitude. Her hymen prevented her from reaching her g-spot, which was supposed to be the best part according to her not-so-celibate friend Susie. However, she felt that removing it should be something she should save for her marriage night. "Maybe I'm a romantic, maybe I'm hung up on some things other people don't care about, maybe I'm an idiot, but this is the way I choose to be" she said to no one, as she slid down the side of the shower.

Letting the warm water course over her body as she moved down to the floor, she began to gently massage her clitoris while keeping her other hand busy with what little she could reach inside of her. As she felt the peak slowly approach, she began to fantasize about what sex might be like with Michael..... tracing her hands down the muscular chest she saw when he exercised in the gym, stroking his hard member, laying back as he gently entered her....

The thought was too much for her, and her entire body spasmed as one of the best orgasms she had ever had coursed through her body. Still twitching a full minute later, she slowly calmed herself by listing the reasons that this way was best for everyone. She had given up on trying to tell Michael about her feelings. He had obviously been trying for some time to say the same thing, but she could see that had just as big a problem as her when it came to actually saying those magic words. Any kind of physical relationship was impossible anyway; she had no access to any kind of birth control, as such items were difficult to manufacture in the closed environment of the vault, and impossible to acquire without someone else knowing. Her father would likely order one of the security officers to simply shoot Michael if such a secret were ever to get out. She cared for him too much to even think of a day when he might be gone.

Her father hated her friendship with Michael, he would probably have a heart attack if he knew the way she truly felt about her best friend. She couldn't care less about his approval of anything, including Michael. Alphonse treated her like she was still ten, dodging most of her attempts at conversation on anything remotely related to the idea of her being a woman. However, without her father's approval it was difficult enough to be friends with Michael, to say nothing of the idea of falling in love with him. The only way she could see for a happy life was one where her father was removed as the overseer. The chances of that were about zero knowing how he held on to his authority.

Rising back to her feet, she finished her shower and quickly got dressed. She might have really needed that release, but she had already missed breakfast, and the tests being issued today were far more important than either her growling stomach or her satisfaction. Looking in the mirror quickly before leaving, she hoped no one would notice the glow on her face from her previous activity.

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Though somewhat confused by the happy vibes he had first gotten from Amata this morning, the chance to talk to her for even five minutes was a heavenly release that completely calmed his nerves. She of course shared how she was hoping to land anywhere in the administrative section, and he told her that the job he really wanted was to be a security officer. They had both told one another these things hundreds of times, but he felt so wound up he simply had to say it aloud, and quite obviously Amata felt the same way.

"You'll easily land a job as an admin. It's your destiny to keep all of us working together. Besides, your father doesn't trust anyone else to run the vault. You practically don't have a choice. Me on the other hand, I'm going to end up somewhere in maintenance, or maybe electronics and programming if your dad's having a good day."

Amata didn't have the heart to tell him what her father had said this morning. Ruining his mood could make him fail, or simply give up on the test. "Don't say something like that. He doesn't control how the tests come out. If you do well, he'll have no choice but to put you in something you're good at. Besides, the only vault security officer under the age of thirty is Steve. If someone from our class doesn't get put into that section, the vault's security force will be seriously lopsided for the next couple of years."

"I guess you're right. I'll just do my best and I know that's going to get me somewhere decent. Not as if I can cheat, considering how they deactivate our pip-boys.... Oh damn!"

"What? What's wrong?"

"I left my calculator in my dad's office this morning! I'll be right back."

"Hold on. Why would you have been in the infirmary this early in the morning?"

"Wanted to have a quick chat with my dad, that's all. Gimme a second, I've got to go grab it."

Mr. Brotch, the current teacher, arrived in the hallway at that moment and opened the classroom door. "You have ten minutes before the test begins."

"Only need one sir!"

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A quick dash through the hall, up one flight of steps, and a couple of turns later, Michael was in the infirmary. His father was nowhere to be found, but Jonas was there to greet him.

"You already stopped in to try to pry the answers out of us!" said Jonas with his usual bright smile. Much as he hated the cheery optimism that Jonas always displayed, the fact that his father worked with him made him a rather common acquaintance, and over the years he had come to look at Jonas like an older brother. "We can't help any of you, that would screw up the test results."

"No more cheating Jonas, I promise. I just left some of my stuff in here earlier. But where is my dad anyway? Doctors usually stay in the infirmary last time I checked."

"Well, since the overseer's likely to be preoccupied watching the camera in the classroom from his office for the next couple of hours, he felt it would be the perfect time to get some extra work done without any worries."

"Oooh! Secret doctor project! I can't wait to hear about it."

"You'll be waiting in maintenance for a few decades if you don't get back to the classroom already."

Michael faked a sad face. "I know when I'm not wanted." With a quick switch to a grin, he swept up his things off the table and ran at full speed back to the classroom. Unfortunately, he nearly ran headfirst into the one thing he had been hoping he could actually avoid today.

"Let's head into one of the storerooms after the test Amata. I can show you a good time."

If the sound of his voice or the subject matter coming out of his mouth wasn't enough, the annoying laugh afterward was more than enough to confirm that he was hearing Butch. Quickly rounding the corner, he arrived just in time for Wally's slow witted brain to get the joke and start chuckling. With Paul off to the side of the group, the complete trio of morons known as the "Tunnel Snakes" was present and accounted for.

"Get out of my way you stupid tunnel snakes." Sadly, no matter how many times either Michael or the overseer tried to shove some backbone into her, she never seemed to pick up on it. Butch knew this, and her weak protest was just more encouragement for another lewd comment.

"Come on Amata. I know you'd like a real tunnel snake."

"Just leave me alone asshole."

"Or what? Your daddy gonna stop me?"

The 'stop me' in Butch's sentence gave Michael the perfect point to enter the conversation, as well as a chance to deliver another classic movie line from one of his favorite westerns. "No, but I will. You can leave or you can get hurt. Your choice."

"Oh! The doctor brat! Tell you what, if you leave now, I won't beat you."

"Butch, the only thing you ever beat is your meat. Amata asked you to leave her alone, and you're going to listen to her."

An embarrassed look quickly spread over Butch's face. "You shut up, or you'll be sorry."

"Why? I'm not the one who was caught playing with myself in the main data room. Kind of sad really, Miss 2076 died two hundred years ago, that makes you a necrophiliac.

Impossible as it may sound, Butch's face became an even deeper shade of red before he finally screamed "That's it! You asked for it moron! Beat this asshole's face in now!"

Before Wally or Paul could move a muscle, Michael had already responded "Wow. Tough guy. You really need two other guys to take me?"

Paul had been obviously suppressing laughter through the whole conversation. He responded quickly with "Mike's right. Fight your own battles man."

"Thanks Paul, but no one calls me Mike. It's Michael or dude, nothing else. So how about you Wally? You up to the challenge of making Butch do something by himself?"

Wally's limited brain power made the poor fool constantly believe he was in charge of the gang, despite Butch leading him around. As usual, his stupidity forced Wally to think for a second before answering the question. "He's right man. Prove you belong in this gang. Let's see you show Michael why no one messes with us."

Butch smiled. "Fine. Let's dance jerkoff!" He took a swing at Michael, but his clumsy effort only threw him off balance. Michael easily dodged his attack and took two steps back. "Last chance Butch. Just leave Amata and me alone and walk into the classroom."

Butch only laughed. "I'm going to break your teeth in. Maybe that will shut your smart mouth." Reaching into his pockets, Butch retrieved a pair of brass knuckles and slipped them onto his right hand.

The first thing officer Gomez had taught him when he was younger was to show no fear. Psychologically intimidating your opponent could weaken his resolve, or even stop a fight altogether. Michael had taken this lesson to heart, and the neutral expression on his face didn't change when he saw the new weapon Butch produced. Placing himself in one of his fancier and almost useless martial stances, he waited to see if this would be enough. Butch still didn't back down, and in fact decided to use that moment to strike. Like any untrained moron, Butch attempted to hit him in the head with his weapon. Michael simply moved to the side and grabbed Butch's arm with one hand and the back of his neck with the other. Using the tunnel snake's own momentum to assist him, he easily slammed Butch face first into the wall and watched him fall to the floor, still sporting the same neutral expression on his face as at the beginning of the fight.

For a moment Butch lay perfectly still on the floor. Michael was at first worried that he might have seriously hurt him, but after a second Butch climbed to his feet, with the only mark on him a bloody nose. "You bastard! I'm gonna kill you!" Again, he chose to simply rush at Michael, only this time he seemed to have forgotten that he had a pair of brass knuckles. Watching Butch run toward him at full speed and with arms outstretched, it only took him a half second to decide a straight kick to the solar plexus was the best solution. Delivering the blow with pinpoint precision just below the ribcage, he quickly grabbed Butch's hand as he went down, removing the brass knuckles. "Thanks for the present Butch, this is great considering that you didn't get me anything for my last birthday."

With typically inept timing, a security officer managed to arrive just as the fight was over. It was officer Mack, quite possibly the worst possible choice for the situation. His jealousy for the attention Amata showed him, not to mention the fact that he was Wally's older brother, meant that he would most likely believe Butch's side of the story. "What the hell's going on here? What did you do this time Michael?"

"This moron was annoying Amata, so I decided to annoy him back. He attempted to attack me, with these no less," Michael said as he handed over the brass knuckles. "All I did was stop him."

"Yeah right. You're always causing trouble around here. Follow me to the security office and maybe I won't hit you upside the head with my baton."

Amata saw that the only course of action left was her feminine charms, and she took the opportunity to step in. "But Stevie, it's true. Butch was making all kinds of sex jokes and wouldn't leave me alone, and Michael helped me. I only wish you'd been here to protect me." She did her best job, batting her eyelashes and gently stroking his ear. It was more than enough to make the brainless officer smile and say "Well, I know you'd never lie Amata. I'll let both of you guys off with a warning. But since there's no prohibition against this sort of thing, I'm afraid I'm forced to give you these back Butch." With the exception of officer Mack, everyone had a surprised look on their faces as he casually handed the weapon to Butch, who had managed to finally get to his knees. "Now go take your exams!"

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With everyone grumbling for a different reason, the teens proceeded down the hall and attempted to make various excuses to Mr. Brotch for their late arrival. "Not much of a point to try talking kids, considering that there's five of you and only eight kids in your class. Just give me the energy cells from your pip-boys and choose a seat.

Smiling at him, Amata chose the seat in the far corner of the room, silently encouraging him to sit next to her and block off any possible line of sight from the tunnel snakes. She leaned over and whispered "My hero!", to which Michael could only respond with a smile on his face and a skipped beat in his heart. Still oblivious to each other, Michael had no idea that Amata was trying her best to hit on him instead of just being nice, while Amata believed that the lack of a return comment meant that he wasn't interested in what she was trying to say. They both silently spoke to themselves:

"Man, I have got to stop the way I'm acting around Amata, or she might start thinking I'm some jerk just trying to impress her. How can I take a simple comment and start getting so excited about it?"

"He didn't even notice. Is it me or the test? I've got to figure out a way to pry his feelings out of him without pushing him off the proverbial cliff."

Both of them turned to the front of the room, re-rendered nervous by the two word conversation, each trying to forget about the situation between them and focus on the test that was being passed around. They both quickly went to work on them. Math was first, with algebra, trigonometry, and geometry all together with a bit of calculus to top it off. Amata finished a full twenty minutes before the end of the two hour time limit on the test, and decided to take the chance to step out for a quick drink. A quick look around revealed that Wally had a nervous look on his face and was erasing his answers almost twice a minute. Since his older brother was a security officer, Wally had a better chance than Michael of taking over as the youngest officer, and the since the only credible excuse the overseer had was that the vault needed only one new officer, Amata was worried as much about Wally's scores as her own or Michael's.

Standing out in the hallway, she noticed that Michael had finished his exam shortly after her, and that he was more than likely going to do the same as her. A delightfully evil thought flashed through her mind, and his response to her earlier comment convinced her that a little innocent playing around was the best way to find out how he really would react. Walking back to the fountain, she took a long drink and waited for him to come out into the hall. He did exactly as she anticipated; he lined up only a step behind her. She wondered if he was actually in the mood for a drink or just wanted to stare at her ass. Either way, she was going through with it; this was the best way to find out if he really felt anything more for her, or if it was a combination of her imagination and the best friend attitude he had always had with her.

She stood up suddenly and took half a step back, not enough to be obvious, but more than enough to throw both of them off balance. Michael tried his best to catch her, but Amata's sudden movement was too much for even his reflexes, especially since he was busy admiring the shapely figure in front of him. He was able to catch her, but at the cost of them both falling to the floor, him on his back and her face down on top of him.

In a split second, Michael had gone from a light-headed kid worried about the next test to an extremely surprised teenage male with a girl lying on top of him. The situation might have been normal enough, if it wasn't for exactly how the two of them had fallen. His eyes were inches from her bosom, and her thigh was rubbing up against the inside of his. It took less than two seconds for him to go from flaccid to so hard his zipper was hurting him. Praying silently to whatever god was listening, he found his panicked mind saying "God, I could rip both our clothes off and screw her right here in the hall. Got to find a way to calm down. Got to find a way to calm down. How the hell am I supposed to get up without her noticing my stuff?"

Amata sheepishly smiled and said "Sorry! Guess I'm a little distracted today." The look on his face said it all; the nervousness was a clear indication of how the situation felt to him. The words "Mission Accomplished!" shot through her mind. Before she stood up, she took one more chance to rub up against him and nearly gasped as she made contact with something she hadn't expected. Biology class, combined with the standard birds and bees talk, had given her the idea that it took some time, at least more than a few seconds, for a male to become fully erect. There was no mistaking it, either he had an iron bar in his pocket or his manhood was currently running down his right pant leg. It wasn't as if she had a ruler, but the one second look she got while they were both getting up was enough for her to see at least six inches, if not more. She made a mental note to try to ask her friend Susie discretely about the subject of guys and size.

Struggling to avoid the hundreds of primal thoughts running through his head, Michael quickly grabbed Amata's hand and pulled them both to their feet. In a shaking voice that was obvious to both of them, he uttered "Uh, you okay? I didn't think I was standing that close to you." She simply beamed a wide smile at him and said "Oh, it was my fault. I'm just so out of it thanks to the exams." The moment she turned around to go back into the classroom, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and adjusted his boxers. Amata had left enough of an impression on him that he probably wasn't going to calm down any time soon, but at least he could try to hide it from her or the rest of the class.

Sitting down with images of Amata on top of him still racing through his mind, Michael grabbed the paper in front of him. The next exam Mr. Brotch passed out dealt mostly with the English language and composition, as well as some literature. The two hour time limit given for this examination was designed to allow students the chance to go over the short passages provided in the test material, but it nearly wasn't enough for Michael. He had barely answered the last question before time was up. What had happened in the hallway earlier was the closest he had physically ever been to Amata. The idea was difficult at best to banish from his mind, and he hoped the upcoming break would give him a chance to cool down.

Amata had fared somewhat better, finishing early again. The previous situation hadn't affected her in the same way, mostly because she had planned the event beforehand. Walking up to Michael, she quietly asked "How about grabbing some lunch? He smiled, calming somewhat as he was able to speak to Amata as just a friend. "I'd prefer something other than tofu, but it is Tuesday, and half of the third hydroponic farm has been down for a month. I don't like soy much, but I think I could eat sealant after that last test."

"You surprised me. You almost didn't finish."

"Guess we're both a little distracted today. You were saying something about food?"

Walking down to the cafeteria, the two managed to simply talk while continuing to try to figure out what was going on in each other's heads today. Michael wondered if today meant Amata finally saw him as more than a friend, as well as reinforcing the fear that both of them could be in jeopardy if her father took one more step forward. Eating another of the o-so-bland tofu steaks that were usually served twice a week, Amata was wondering the same about Michael and her father, but was also concerned about the fact that Michael seemed so afraid of her advances. Was she taking things too fast? Was he as much of an old fashioned romantic as her? Regardless of the internal conflicts they were having, they both found that, as millions of times in the past, simply being with each other was a comforting way to spend time. As they walked back to the classroom, both felt prepared for the rest of the tests to come.

The following test, covering both basic as well as advanced science subjects such as chemistry, physics, and biology, went well for the both of them as well as most of the rest of the class. Wally was the only exception; his panic and frantic erasing during the entire test was enough to tell that he was not going to find himself on the receiving end of any high scores. Though perhaps somewhat base, Michael reveled in the fact that Wally might be receiving low test scores. He knew just as well as Amata did that Wally becoming an officer was going to decrease his already low odds. Being an officer wasn't just about toughness. An intelligent officer noticed the evidence and saw what was out of place. Knowing a lot about both physical locks and computers could open sealed doors and uncover devious plots. Chemistry was a little too exotic, but the mixture he had come up with when he was 13 made a perfect pipebomb, and the other officers had been extremely impressed as well as grateful for the new weapon, even though they were unlikely at best to ever use it.

The next test was the least important of the batch, concentrating on history and social studies of both pre-war and vault society. Originally intended to provide a rounded measure of the test takers, it was rendered mostly pointless thanks to the closed environment of the vault. Even Wally seemed to do well on this quiz. Amata didn't seem to care much about it, but Michael's favorite point was that if you knew mistakes that others had already made, you could avoid making those mistakes yourself. Although she often argued that neither of them were going to lead any armies or restructure the economic system of a pre-war government, Michael still found most of the subject interesting.

After another brief break, spent mostly by heading out into the hall to stretch his legs, Michael returned for the final test. Although all the exams together were called the GOAT, the name technically referred to the psychological exam given last. Filled with a bunch of stupid multiple-choice questions, there was no real right or wrong answers, only excuses. Excuses for officials, mostly the overseer, to make decisions that could override the scores on the other tests. The test sounded like it might be useful for basic profiling, but most people in the vault had told him that it was practically useless. Other than a veiled warning from Jonas to keep his cool when it came to the last question, he had no idea what to expect.

As the test was handed to him, he hesitated for a moment before opening the booklet. What he saw when he opened it was both hilarious and borderline retarded. "Congratulations! You've made it onto one of the vault baseball teams. Which position do you prefer?" How was that supposed to determine what kind of person he was? What could someone get out of that? After giving it a moment of thought, he decided since a pitcher was usually a leader on the team, that was probably a good answer. The rest of the questions weren't much better; one of the more retarded ones asked what was the best way to play a prank on one of your parents.

The final question was perhaps the easiest and most difficult at the same time, at least for a person like him. The question read "Who is the most important person in Vault 101: the man who keeps us safe from the nuclear wasteland, and to whom we owe our lives?" Michael didn't have to read the answer choices; by the end of the question he knew that the only answer expected was the overseer. What did surprise him was that all the choices, A, B, C, and D, were the overseer. No chance to get it wrong. It took serious willpower to avoid simply scratching out all four choices and not actually answering the question. Circling all four in the hope of some last minute ass kissing, he handed in the test and was surprised to see that he had been the last to finish. Stepping into the hallway, he found Butch leaning against the wall with no tunnel snakes backing him up. "What's up Butch?"

"Not much. Stayed because I wanted to talk. Thought about a bunch of things: apologizing, challenging you to round 2, and everything in between."

"Nothing between those two Butch. Neither of us feel up to another fight, and if you're going to apologize, tell it to Amata. She'd like you to cut out the shit you've been giving her."

"How do you know I'm not turning that girl on, huh? How do you know that she's not just playing hard to get?"

"Because she's told me. Several times. Why else would I risk being thrown into a tiny cell unless I knew she wanted me to stop you?"

Butch looked at him with a grimace. It was obvious that Butch only cared about the physical side of Amata, especially since he had been unable to convince either of the other two girls in this cycle to do anything other than talk to him. "I actually care about her Butch. You don't seem to care about any part of her other than her tits and ass. If you're not going to leave her alone, at least stop doing this kind of thing. She doesn't like it and you know it."

Butch's expression changed to a blank face. "Why you haven't told her this stuff yet is beyond me. You're obviously really be into her. But be careful, Romeo and Juliet was on our lit test today, and you remember what happened to the two of them because of Juliet's family."

"It wasn't just Juliet's family, it was Romeo's too. The two families had been mortal enemies back several generations. My dad is all right with this, so I'm not going to end up like Romeo. Besides, I wouldn't kill myself under any circumstances, least of all with something as painful and slow as poison. You might want to go back in there and change a few of your answers before you get stuck as a barber."

"Stop it Michael, you're making me angry, and you know where that leads."

"Yeah, you on the floor and me in a cell. Nice talking with you Butch, but I've got things to do."

"Like catching up with Amata? Where the hell'd she go anyway?"

He grinned. Stanley had taught him a few things about the inside of the vault, and he'd quickly passed that info on to Amata. After a day like this, there was only one place she could have gone.

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The vault held all kinds of access tunnels, maintenance hallways, and ventilations ducts that few people knew about. He'd been lucky to become friends with the senior maintenance tech at an early age; it did more than give him an advantage at hide and seek. The overseer had permanently stepped up patrols for a while when he was younger, so he had needed to take full advantage of what he'd learned. He'd had problems sleeping when he was younger, and his best recourse was a walk instead of the medications the overseer virtually forced on any resident having problems.

_The silence alone was almost too much. Staring at the ceiling, he tried all the things other people had suggested, but even the ridiculous suggestion from Paul about counting sheep was of no help. All it did was make him wonder if sheep still existed, or if they were another species made extinct by the war. Walking into the living room and heading slowly for the door, he was surprised to see his father James sitting in a chair a few feet away. His dad ran through several explanations, even saying it was probably a kind of claustrophobia, which sort of explained his urge to roam the vault, but it really didn't make sense when he revealed to his dad the way he'd been avoiding the officers on duty every night._

_"You've been using the ventilation system?"_

_"Only a little. Mostly the maintenance hallways and stuff like that. I only use them when it's the only way to get to another place."_

_"All right. You definitely don't have claustrophobia. But you need to stop this; you can never be sure that someone won't catch up with you."_

_"Dad, Stanley and the techs are the only ones who ever use them, and they said that all of them were perfectly safe and virtually unknown to the rest of the people in the vault. It's too cool to avoid."_

_James sighed. Michael was exactly the same as when he was a kid. He knew that there was no point telling him no; he would just stop for a week and then start back up. "If you ever get caught, I had no idea that you were sneaking out."_

_"Haven't been caught yet. Watch this." Walking over to the door to their living quarters, he opened the door and leaned out into the hall. With no one in the immediate area, he dashed a few feet down the hall, pressed the leftmost side of two plates running along the wall, and revealed to a surprised dad that a handle was behind them. "According to Stanley, this was actually designed for emergency evacuation in case of a problem with the blast doors. It doesn't lead outside though; just between key floors in the vault. From inside I can get into one of the filtration systems and all the air vents." _

_"If you ever get stuck in one of the vents, it could become a serious problem."_

_"I'm not exactly big dad, I'm only thirteen. Besides, all the main ducts are large enough for a fully grown person like you to get through."_

_James smiled. His son worked fast, solved problems on his own, and found ways to do whatever he wanted. Just like his mother. "Again, I have no idea that you're gone."_

_"See you later then." Michael pulled on the handle, causing a carefully disguised part of the wall to come loose. Pulling it out like a door, he slipped inside and closed the hatch._

_A few minutes later he arrived at his destination. The lower levels of the vault contained five large automated hydroponic farms. Michael liked to just call them greenhouses, after the buildings he saw in the database. Rarely visited by any people, a small group of Mr. Handy robots carefully tended to the plants, harvesting as necessary and returning the food to the kitchen behind the cafeteria. The fourth facility had one particular thing that had attracted his interest. There was a large walled off room in the corner of the room, a sort of storage closet, filled with various equipment used by the farming bots. It didn't extend all the way to the high ceiling of the room, there was nearly eight feet of space between its top and the ceiling. As well, the floor space was large, about twenty feet by twenty feet, making a lot of room to hang out. A large vent exited directly atop the space, meaning that it didn't even involve any climbing to reach it. He liked to imagine that he was in a tree house, another one of the great things that he found in the history database._

_It didn't take much to make the space awesome. The hanging lights in the room extended below the level of his space, meaning that it was in almost total darkness. Combined with the height of the area and virtually deserted room, it was almost impossible to see if someone chose to visit farm 4. To top it all off, he added a "borrowed" lamp so he could turn the spot into day or night as he wished. He'd managed to drag a telescreen down to the spot, and running a holotape with his favorite pre-war movies was way better than having to watch it in his quarters. An old king sized matress and a few blankets were enough to turn the space into a second room for him, as he fell asleep much more easily here. Looking over the room, which was nearly the size of a football field, he felt much calmer, as he could imagine that he was in a forest, with the robots being the wild animals who lived there._

_The mattress proved to nearly be his undoing. Several people in the vault noticed it missing, and it was the reason that the overseer had stepped up security recently. Still, with how little he needed the actual corridors, it was relatively easy to reach his second room, as even security officers didn't enter the farm levels. Fortunately only one person discovered his sneaking out, and followed close behind him until he went to his secret refuge._

_Since he thought he was all alone, the sound of the word "Cool!" was enough to make him jump up and place himself into a fighting stance, nearly hitting the shadowy figure who had just stepped out of the vent. To his amazement, turning on the light revealed the spy was none other than Amata._

_"Are you crazy? If your dad catches you, it'll be a locked bedroom door between ten and six o'clock for you."_

_"You've got the same problem."_

_"No, I explained to my dad that I had a secret spot. He doesn't know where and he doesn't want to know anyway. He said he respected my needs and he would just pretend he had no idea if the overseer found out. Your dad will act a little different."_

_Amata sighed. They were best friends, they shared everything. Him not telling her about this spot felt bad to her. "Why didn't you tell me about this? Did you think I would ruin it?"_

_"NO! I just... I just..."_

_"What?"_

_"I thought you would think it was dorky. It's a bunch of junk hidden in a farm. Not exactly the definition of cool; I just kind of like it down here."_

_"Are you kidding? This is the perfect place to get away; it's like a mini vacation resort. Complete with everything you'd need. Mind if I stay?"_

_Michael smiled. He thought the place was perfect before, but now it was complete. Turning on the telescreen and handing Amata the half-filled bag of potato crisps he'd been munching on, he knew that life couldn't get much better that this._

_------------------------------------------------------_

Her statement that night was a great way to describe it. The perfect place to get away. Three years later, no one else had managed to find the spot, even after a full vault search when the overseer noticed that the both of them had disappeared in the middle of the night. Both officer Kendall and Taylor had surprised them by walking out of the stairwell at three in the morning, but the light was already off and they managed to turn off the telescreen before it attracted any attention. A full fifteen minutes later, which included a sweep of the inside of the closet they were on top of, the officers left the room without any suspicion whatsoever. When they got back, they simply explained that they had gone for a walk and had not encountered any security officers along the way. It was kind of sad that an outraged overseer disciplined every vault security official afterward, but he stopped the ordered patrols when four straight nights couldn't find a trace of the vanishing teens.

No matter how many times he visited the place, it still felt almost magical. But when he arrived after the exams, he was surprised to find that Amata wasn't present. It was a pretty long climb back through the vents, he was already here, and searching the whole vault for Amata could take hours. He was too tired anyway; the tests had been more draining than a whole day of exercising and training with the officers.

Lying down on the old matress, still just as comfortable as it was when he first "borrowed" it, he turned on the telescreen for a few minutes until his eyelids started to feel too heavy. Turning it off and laying back, a few last thoughts of Amata crossed his mind, gently lulling him to sleep.

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After the test, the first thing Amata had done was meet up with Susie. She was practically the vault librarian, and her reputation had to mean that she knew something. It took a little convincing to get her to talk, but the obsessed girl had for some reason chose to study these strange subjects in her spare time, despite her real world experience. Amata could ask no one else, which was the final reason Susie agreed to follow her back to her quarters.

"So, what exactly do you want to know?"

"Well, I was kind of wondering about a few details... when it comes to sex."

"Shit, sex is an easy question. Pre-war people were obsessed with sex; medical advances meant there was a cure for every STD and birth control was cheap. A lot of people did scientific studies on both sexes, and some of it managed to get included in the vault database before the bombs were dropped. Don't know why the hell the first people in here decided to include it, but it's pretty useful stuff. Anything specific?"

"Well, what's about six inches compared to the norm for guys?"

"If you're talking erect, it's the higher end of average, actually. A lot of pre-war studies put it as between five and six inches for most men. It's been that way so far. I haven't found anyone more than an inch outside that range. But those studies always had lots of disputes, especially since most guys and a lot of girls were so obsessed with it. The shorter ones thought they were closer to average, and the longer ones were in all kinds of videos, so a lot of people thought they were the norm."

"Videos? What videos?"

A wide grin spread over Susie's face. "Seriously Amata, are you kidding? There's not exactly much of a selection, but a few people put them in the database before the vault was sealed. Probably the same ones who included that extra medical data. What do you think Butch was looking at that one day when Paul and Vicky Hannon walked in on him?"

"Pornography? Are you serious?"

"Of course. Here, I already downloaded it all to my terminal a long time ago" she said, handing a holotape to Amata. Hesitating for a moment, she pocketed the tape as Susie said "It may be publicly considered wrong, but deep down everyone likes watching it when they're alone, or with that special someone.... In your case Michael."

"What are you talking about? We're just friends, best friends."

Susie rolled her eyes. "Don't try to bullshit me. Even if it hasn't been going on for long, it's going on now. I could tell what happened to you two in between the science and math exams."

"Oh god! Was it really that obvious?"

"Everyone in our generation is too naive. Your secret is safe. But are you going to give him some or what?"

"Look, let's stop with all your questions and get back to mine. You said most guys are like five to six?"

"Yeah, but the only ones you'll see in videos are at least eight. Most of the time bigger is better, but there's a limit to how much a girl can take. The database says there was once a world record guy who was almost sixteen inches, but he was a huge exception, and he probably had serious heart problems thanks to the blood pressure he needed for that thing. Not like many women could even take that anyway."

"What exactly is right? How big... er... ?"

"If it isn't already obvious, girls stretch a lot. How do you think people have kids? You're gonna want a little stretching if you want to really have some fun. Five is enough for a good time, if he cares enough about you and isn't one of those who finishes in a minute. But any less than that, well.... I got with Freddie once, and he was barely four inches! Not to mention that he finished in about thirty seconds. No fun at all. Stay away from him."

"I don't need to know that! I hate him anyway."

"Okay, fine, moving on. The biggest I found was a guy who was a little more than seven, and it only took a few seconds to be stretched and ready for a good time. Let me tell you, if you ever dump Michael, pick up Freddie's dad, officer Gomez."

"He's married you crazy slut! You are going to get into more trouble than me!"

"Yeah, but he's not happy with his wife and he keeps his mouth shut. He's never alone too often, but I love it when he does get time off. He's got to have the best...."

"For God's sake stop! I don't want to hear about every guy you've slept with!"

"Fine. To continue, eight or nine will probably hurt a little the first time around, but if you tell him to wait a minute and just let everything adjust, I bet it'll probably be way better than an average guy. More than ten is probably nonexistent in the vault's small population, and it's way too much anyway for a small girl like you or me."

"You sure about all this?"

"As sure as I can be about what I've already done, and as sure as either of us can be about the archives. Nothing else has been wrong in all those files. Now you answer my questions Amata. Do you plan on giving him some?"

"It's impossible, I can't get any of the stuff I'd need to keep from getting pregnant. I'd be locked in a room for the rest of my life, and you know my father would literally kill Michael over something like that."

Susie smiled. "No one even notices when I make requests for the med synthesizer, not even Michael's dad. Everyone's used to it now anyway, thanks to the reputation I managed to acquire a while back. I could easily get some extra for you, if you do me a favor."

Amata felt a knot growing in her stomach. The rumor mill didn't just label Susie as a slut, it also said that one night she made a pass at Christine. "You better not say anything like what you said to Christine. Or Michael!"

"Ha! Nice, but I was feeling a little experimental, not to mention really horny, when me and Christine were hanging out that night. It's not really my bag. As well, Michael's always blown my charms off because he's so enamored with you. What I really want is to watch the two of you."

"What....Susie you slut! This is something for me and Michael! Not a show for you to get off on!"

"All right, fine. But nothing for me means nothing for you. If you two don't want to have real sex, I guess I can tell you about some other stuff." She explained that there were all kinds of other things they could do, amazing Amata with a new piece of information every minute. Susie crossed the line when she started to talk about anal sex. "Don't know how you'll feel, but I like it. Just find some lubricant or else he'll make you really sore, maybe even hurt you."

"Jesus.....I mean...stop it! You're gross!"

"It's how things work Amata. It's not really sex, but it's the closest and best thing you two are going to get in your situation. Of course, you getting pregnant is not really a bad thing anyway."

"What the hell are you talking about? Are you insane? Do you even know what's going on in this vault?"

"Amata, we're in the middle of one of the pregnancy cycles right now, vault population protocol means abortions are outlawed right now even if the overseer wanted it. And how could he justify killing Michael, even in an accident, if the rest of the vault knew that he was the father? Maybe he'd even sympathize with the situation, he knows raising you was hard after your mother died when you were three. If you want to try the blackmail route, it's your best option."

She thought about it for a minute. It all sort of made sense. Crazy sense anyway. She could think of no reason not to spend her whole life with Michael; they were together everyday already, and they both obviously wanted it to stay that way. The eight year gap in pregnancy cycles meant almost all the women in the vault had children when they were 24 or 32, with some at 40 or even a few at 48. Several generations had some sixteen year old pregnancies, but they were relatively few, despite encouragement for keeping the growth rate of the vault from becoming negative. Did he even want a child? Did she really want a child? Or was it a vain attempt to find a way for them to be together?

" There's no way that'd actually work. I could never do something like that without discussing it with him anyway. Look, thanks for all the information, I really need to stop this conversation now."

"All right Amata. Just remember that an orgasm's an orgasm, even if the two of you aren't really fucking."

"Okay, okay, stop talking! Thanks again, but I gotta leave."

Trying to walk down the hall without a strange look on her face, she headed for the one place that she knew Michael would be.

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Twenty minutes later, after carefully pulling the last grating aside, she was shocked not because Michael was sleeping, but because he had a bulge in his pants that she could see even in the near darkness. Quietly working her way over to him, she sat down on the other side of the mattress and carefully observed the fascinating site before her. He had obviously been warm; his shirt was undone and open. The lower half of his jumpsuit still remained, restraining him from his full potential. Laying down beside him, she found herself thinking "What is he dreaming about? Or who?" Moving as though possessed, she worked her hands slowly down his chest, reaching for the buckle on his belt.

With a barely audible click, the belt was separated; she reached down toward the final barrier. Holding the end of the zipper in her hands, she hesitated briefly before saying to herself "Get a grip. You're only checking him out. After that you don't have to do anything else." Slowly pulling it downward, she nearly yelped as the sudden freedom allowed his member to spring free, pointing directly at the ceiling. Her earlier estimates were wrong, but the change in length was in the right direction. She reached for the measuring tape in her pocket, slowly drawing the edge out until it reached the tip of him. Squinting in the darkness, she could barely see the numbers on the tape, but the large 8 was clearly passed, at least by a small amount. Remembering what Susie had told her before, she slowly placed her hand around him, carefully squeezing but not moving her hand.

She whispered softly to him. "Do you want this Michael? What do you want? Why can't you just tell me? Why can't I just tell you?"

At that moment, an event happened that they both later realized was either destiny or a gift from some deity who took pity on their situation. Uncomfortable on his back, he unconsciously rolled over, settling on top of Amata. The resistance he encountered quickly awoke him, and it took less that a second to realize that his pants were undone, with his manhood erect and in the hands of the person under him. Both of them panicking, Michael's heart nearly stopped when he heard whose voice was beneath him. She slowly removed her hands as she said "I'm sorry Michael. I just....I just....I just don't know anymore."

The thoughts swirling in his mind crested, and the last of his fears boiled away as the bottled up words came to the surface. "I love you Amata. I always have. I don't know why I've been unable to say it, but it's always what kept me going. You're the reason I wake up with a smile in the morning. You're the reason I can eat synthetic corn flakes with soy milk every day. You're the reason I've never found a single class boring. You're the reason I no longer have to walk around half the vault before I can fall asleep. Being with you is everything to me."

Her eyes started to water, her face not crying but instead smiling. "I've waited so long to hear you say that. I was worried you only cared about me as a friend. It's why I fell between tests today. I was so scared, I just had to know. And you didn't disappoint."

His eyes grew wider, his eyebrows arched up. "You did that on purpose? You could've just started rubbing on me last time we were both down here."

Her expression changed to a sorrowful one. "I'm sorry, I just...."

"Shhhhh. I'm here Amata." He slowly brushed the few strands of hair out of here face and held her chin. "We're together now, and you don't need to worry about anything. I have to ask you something. Will you be my girlfriend?"

The sad expression on her face bursted into absolute joy in less than a second. "Yes! Yes! I've wanted this for so long." Simultaneously, they both moved together as they enjoyed the most passionate moment of their lives. Their lips met softly, caressing each other, perhaps not the most experienced kiss in the world but certainly the most passionate.

"I don't want to hide this Amata. I want to tell everyone, I want to hold your hand in the hall, I want to put your arm around you when we're sitting together, I want to kiss you when we have to separate. I'm not afraid anymore, I don't care who says anything."

"He'll stop us. He can do anything."

"We can do anything Amata. Together we can stand in his face and tell him to stop. I want to tell him, I want to show him how good I can be to you. Why do you think I've been trying for years to impress him with test scores and jujitsu? Maybe after seeing how happy we are he'll stop."

"Not yet, please. I can't stand the thought of what he might do." Her expression was one of true fear; there was no way he could say anything more without upsetting her.

"Whatever you desire, I will do it Amata. Anything."

"I'm not ready for everything yet Michael, but please help me. I need to feel what it's like to have you pleasure me, and I need to feel what it's like to pleasure you."

He only smiled as he rose up to his knees. Pulling her up with him, he removed his own shirt. Amata felt transfixed, she immediately reached for the bottom of hers and pulled it over her head. Taking only a moment to admire the figure clad in a white silk bra in front of him, he began to kiss her neck as he reached around behind her and undid the clasp. He pulled the straps down her arms, slowly exposing her perfect breasts. They were exactly as he had dreamed, perfectly round and horizontal, her small nipples erect despite the warm temperature of the room. Leaning forward, he took one in his mouth, sucking gently as he massaged the other.

A shock ran through her entire body, a warmth spread through her she had never felt before. Reaching down, she found him still as hard as before he had awoken. Stopping his suckling, she gently pushed him down onto the mattress and removed his pants. With only his boxers remaining, his shaft emerging from the small slit in the fabric, she crawled along him until her head reached his stomach. With care unlike any she had ever taken before, she grasped him with one hand and the waistband of his boxers with the other, pulling gently to remove the final barrier to him. Losing her concentration for a moment when the sight of his genitals was finally open to her, she continued to pull downward until his underwear was finally free. Before her was that which she had only dreamed of before this day.

She stood up, knowing that giving him a small show was something he would love. Slowly moving from side to side, the topless woman began to dance. Swaying gradually, she leisurely undid the buttons on her pants, undoing them so slowly Michael was sure his heart was beating at least ten times between each of her movements. She turned a full half-circle and bent over, sticking her round buttocks just inches from Michael's face, as she slowly pulled her pants down, leaving only a thin white fabric between him and her womanhood. Unable to hold on longer, he grasped her by the waist, turned her back around, and removed her panties slowly, gently brushing the inside of her legs all the way down.

Feeling faint as his hot breath coursed over her most precious place, her legs gave way as she nearly fell to the floor. She didn't feel scared for one moment; she knew Michael was there, she knew that it was impossible for her to reach the ground. He easily caught her, lifting her up in his arms for another kiss. She gladly returned it, saddened briefly when he pulled away from her, but delighted a few moments later when his mouth made contact with her neck.

Setting her down on the mattress, his mouth slowly moved down her body, pausing briefly at each of her nipples, drawing a circle around her belly button, before working down to the inside of her thigh. He was happy to find that she was not clean shaven, something that he thought was unnatural, but instead neatly trimmed down to nearly nothing, exactly as he had pictured her. Amata believed that his finger would be the first thing to touch her, but she had no idea that other people in the vault had taken notice of the videos in the archives, and Michael had resolved that he would do everything he had seen to increase her pleasure. Like a lightning bolt, his tongue flicked out between his lips and entered the moistness in between hers. A scream, not of anger but of passion, echoed through the whole chamber as she felt him make contact.

It was all he needed to continue. Circling his tongue slowly around the outside of her labia, he placed one quick kiss directly on her before removing his face just enough to wet one of his fingers. Momentarily regaining her senses, she glanced downward at him, seeing an expression of pure joy that showed he was getting just as much pleasure as her. He looked straight into her eyes as he slowly inserted the digit, his face changing to surprise as he encountered something. "Amata, I...."

"Save it for the night when we can finally be together."

He nodded, finding the entire idea as exciting as her. Withdrawing his newly soaked finger to massage her outer lips, he took his tongue to yet another place Amata did not expect. He gently licked just under the lower edge of her, and slowly brought his tongue upward, between her labia, until he reached the prize he was seeking. The contact increased the building sensation within her, and another gasp escaped her mouth as she lost the ability to hold her head up. She instead grasped both of her breasts firmly, kneading and massaging herself while whispering in a barely audible tone "Don't stop.....never stop...." He worked his finger just barely inside her, circling her inside while drawing his tongue over her clit. Her breathing increased, signaling to Michael that it was time. He entered her with a second finger and placed his mouth directly on her clitoris, sucking as gently as possible while continuing to carefully lick the small nub. The fastest breathing Michael had ever heard was quickly followed by Amata yelling "I'm...I'm....cumming!", as she shrieked like an animal. Still continuing his efforts, he waited until her breathing returned to normal and it was clear that Amata had completely experienced everything he could offer. Crawling up next to her, he encircled her with his arms, drawing her in for a long kiss as he massaged her stomach.

Reveling in the post-orgasmic glow given to her by Michael, she suddenly realized that he had not had his chance to feel how much she cared. Slowly separating her mouth from his, she moved down his body until she was only inches away from his still hard member. Exhaling slowly, she carefully grasped the base of his penis and began to slowly stroke him, producing the same moan from him that had escaped her lips only moments before. Looking down his body, she thought briefly about the fact that Michael had used his mouth.

A new sensation sent a shock through his body, causing his eyes to flash open and his head to jerk upward. Amata had placed her lips directly over the head of his member, still caressing him, looking directly into his eyes. He could feel her tongue pressing against him as her lips moved down his shaft. Losing his ability to think, he leaned back as she began to swirl her tongue around him.

Pumping him as fast as she could, she worked her mouth exactly as Susie had told her. Sucking gently, she could feel his heart beating every time her tongue made contact with him. She saw his muscles visibly tense up, and already knew what was about to happen as he uttered in a shaky voice "Amata, you have to move. I'm gonna cum!" She paused only to say "I know" before continuing her previous efforts.

Gripping the mattress so tightly the fabric began to crack, Michael let loose a torrent directly into Amata's mouth. Though she first gagged as the stream hit the back of her throat, she quickly began to swallow as much of it as she could. It didn't taste bad, and it was actually kind of hot to think about what she was doing. Exactly as Susie had said. As he ceased to ejaculate, she massaged his member with her tongue, carefully making sure that not a drop of his seed was left outside of her.

Ceasing her efforts as he became limp, she quickly jumped on him. "Michael, promise me this won't be the only time. Promise me that you'll do this to me every time I ask you."

"That's funny, I was about to say the same thing."

They both smiled as she rested her head on his chest, the both of them holding each other gently. Slowly falling asleep, Michael knew that no matter what anyone said, no matter what anyone did, he would be living in paradise for the rest of his life.

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As Michael and Amata both reveled in each other, the overseer was conducting another of his meetings that he hoped would prevent something of that sort from ever happening. Both Butch and Officer Mack came into his office at exactly nine, both knowing that they were not currently in the overseer's favor.

"Do you two know why I wanted you two to come here at the end of today? I wanted to have a little congratulatory chat. But obviously that's not going to happen. Now, since I am annoyed, we are going to play a game. It's called 'What the fuck went wrong?'. It'll make me feel a little better."

Butch was the first to speak. "I tried to get him to fight me, but he just won't throw the first punch anymore. He's a calm guy with a smart mouth and an iron fist."

The overseer's face changed from a grimace to a smile. "I know that much retard. You left out the part about how you tried to use my daughter to get his attention. I specifically told you not to try something involving her. After today, they're even closer that they were before. Does that sound like something I want?"

"Well......He always ignores me when I start saying anything else....."

"Oh no Butch, that's not my only concern. As well, I gave you those brass knuckles so you would use them, and not get your ass kicked by an unarmed teenager. The fact that you chose to apologize after the test is another thing that pisses me off. "

Butch's attitude quickly became defensive, which was a great surprise to the overseer. Normally Butch simply rolled over whenever commanded. Was this dog becoming feral? "He's a hell of a lot better fighter than me, and since you didn't bring any of the rest of my gang in on this, I had to take him alone. The apologizing thing is in my best interest, because I don't really have a problem with him except when you tell me to. He doesn't go around attacking people without a reason. He's made it clear he wants to be friends, or at least on neutral ground with the Tunnel Snakes."

"My, my, Butch, do I need to remind you who's in charge? You will never talk to me like that."

"I'm sorry sir, but this situation is ridiculous. What's your problem with him?"

That is none of your concern. As for you, you know people who fail me are punished. But I guess you deserve a 'D' for your effort. Now get the fuck out of my office, and hope to god almighty that you do better next time I call on you. Maybe I'll include your pathetic little gang next time."

With a scared look highlighting his face, Butch walked out of the room. As he slowly trudged to his quarters, rebellious thoughts began to course through him. "I'll show that motherfucker who's boss. If we got Michael and Freddie in the gang, that'd be all the young guys in the vault. We would totally be in charge, no matter what anyone else said. I've got to work on those guys, we'll be the Tunnel Kings!"

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Alphonse sat back down at his desk. He looked toward officer Mack, inwardly smiling at the conversation he was about to have. "That boy may be next to useless, but I made you an officer because I thought I would be able to use you."

With the typically slow response that followed his less than average wit, officer Mack responded "He didn't hit Butch first. Plus Amata said he was innocent. What'd I do wrong?"

Smiling, the overseer responded simply with "Nothing." Seeing the bewildered face on the officer was hilarious, but he kept his composure long enough to turn around before cracking a smile. "The only reason I even made you aware of this is because I needed an officer who would react to the situation without looking past it. No investigation into where the brass knuckles came from, no questioning of those who were involved, no official reports. Given both your lack of creative problem solving abilities and my daughter's on scene testimony, I can't expect much else out of you."

"I'm not in trouble?"

"No, but don't expect much out of me as far as gratitude is concerned. Get back to your post, and try to forget exactly what I said today."

With his typical smile and salute, officer Mack exited the room. Though at first Mack's intelligence was once again worth another chuckle, the issue of today's exams came back to the forefront of his mind. They needed at least one security officer out of this generation, and the only one who really qualified was Michael. Mr. Brotch had better show him the right scores tomorrow.

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If I offended anyone due to content, I'm not sorry. That's what the M rating is for. If I offended anyone because of the length of this chapter, I seriously did split it up somewhat to make another chapter. I actually wrote nearly fifty pages just for this day and the day after. I couldn't divide it anymore without making the story look horrible. Will Amata and Michael's new relationship become exposed to the vault? Is Butch serious about taking the vault for the snakes? Will the test scores make the overseer think in his best interests, or the vault's? More to come, let's see how the vault reacts to all this conflict the next day.


	3. A New Dawn

Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. Some spoilers and some things that never actually happen in the fallout world may be found in the chapters of this story. Rated M because there's some mature stuff in here. As always, I live on feedback, so use reviews, PM, or my profile's email at your leisure.

This chapter focuses on the day after the GOAT exams, and it's sort of a continuation of the second chapter because I felt it was too long. Is there any chance for the would-be security officer? Is more of the vault pissed than the overseer realizes? Will Amata and Michael finally be happy? Or will the overseer use every option he has to get what he wants?

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Chapter 3 – A New Dawn

The alarm screeched, awakening James to yet another routine day of work. Proceeding through the usual morning routine he had become accustomed to, he first stopped to check on his son, Michael. An empty bed was no surprise to him. The boy was up and about so much, he rarely was in his bed in the morning. Though it was possible that he had woken and already left for the day, James knew that Michael had found himself a secret spot somewhere in the vault long ago, and definitely seemed to prefer it to his quarters. James smiled, saying to himself "You'll never learn will you? For both your sakes, Amata better not be with you."

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Going through a slightly different version of the same morning routine as any other vault dweller, the overseer awoke to another day of ordering the vault's citizens around. As usual, he proceeded to the private kitchenette in his personal quarters, munching on pancakes as the rest of the vault gathered in the cafeteria for a hearty breakfast of synthetic corn flakes and soy milk. The previous overseer had forgone such luxuries for reasons unknown to him; he simply could not comprehend why someone in the position of overseer would actually ignore something he obviously deserved. The other citizens of the vault had not been aware of how far he went with the special treatment he gave himself, but someone had decided to change that a few years ago.

_On a morning about four years ago, the overseer had been going through a very similar morning. _"_Another day as usual" was the only thought in the overseer's head. Unfortunately for him, his daughter had found out that today was a holiday known to pre-war people as 'Christmas', and had plans to reinstate the wonderful holiday. The moment after he left, a smiling Amata proceeded out of her room and unlocked the small refrigerator with the passcode she had seen him use several times. Her father had underestimated both the girl's curiosity and memory, and was about to pay for it._

_Walking down the hall, she caught Michael and several other kids talking outside the cafeteria. Michael quickly turned his attention to her, stating "I almost started without you! Come on, I'm starving." _

_"No, today you will definitely not be starving! Follow me!" She ran down the hall back to her quarters, with Michael in close pursuit. Reaching the door, she closed it as soon as he had crossed the threshold. "Check it out!" She opened the fridge to the sight of a bewildered Michael, displaying every culinary treasure known to Michael, and quite a few that he had never seen before. Reaching out to grab a strange looking green orb, he turned to Amata and asked "Is this seriously a fresh pear?"_

_She smiled. "Looks a lot better before it gets processed into goop, doesn't it? Maybe it's a waste of nutrients to eat it the old fashioned way, but I gotta say, I like this much better. Eat it already!" With a slight smile, he brought it to his lips and took a bite out of the fresh fruit, savoring the delicious, all natural juices as they ran down his chin. "Your dad gets to eat all this stuff?" "Yeah, and he told me that it should be a secret, but I think it's time everyone else got some of this stuff too." The look on their faces told them that they were both thinking the same thing, and they instantly separated for five seconds, only to reappear in front of the refrigerator with several bags._

_He stopped for a moment to say"Don't you think your dad is gonna be a little pissed? I mean, this is sort of his secret stash. And it's yours too. Don't you want to save some?"_

_A frown crossed her normally cheerful face. "I get a bite of this stuff every once in a while, but my dad saves it all for himself usually. That's kind of why I wanted to share it with everyone. I picked you because I knew you wouldn't pig out first before taking it to the cafeteria, and I knew you wouldn't care about how he reacted."_

_Without another word, they grabbed everything out of the fridge, from real whole wheat bread to the only fruits that made it out of the hydroponic farms without being processed. Looking at one of the jars before removing it, he paused to say "Strawberry jam? Amata, what the hell is a strawberry?"_

_"Don't know, probably another one of those pre-war plants everyone ate. Oh, and merry Christmas."_

_"Christmas? What's that?"_

_"It's a day where people celebrate being friends and family and give each other gifts. I found out about it in the database a few weeks ago, and today is the day people celebrated it every year."_

_"Cool. But how am I supposed to top this? Amata, what can I possibly get you?"_

_She giggled. "I can think of something. But let's wait until after we dragged these to the cafeteria."_

_The sight of Amata and Michael trudging into the cafeteria with several bags was unusual, but not enough to rouse anyone from their morning meals. What did awaken them was when the two began to place various packages wrapped in old jumpsuits on the tables, while yelling "Merry Christmas!"_

_Officer Gomez stopped Michael and Amata, asking them "What's going on? What are you two doing?" Amata simply pulled another package out of the bag and said "Today is Christmas! We're supposed to give out presents and have a good time!" Unwrapping the gift, he found a strange bottle full of liquid with a pear inside. "Didn't try that one, but it looks pretty good!" said Michael, as both moved on to other tables._

_Officer Gomez could hardly believe his eyes. A giant bottle with a crude label that said 'Poire Williams' was in his hands, still cold. Though unaware that this day had been Christmas for the last two hundred years, he was well aware that he was staring at a bottle full of brandy. Where on earth could the kids have possibly gotten something like this? How could this have been made with the rationing system in place? And how could someone possibly have had a bottle attached to one of the pear trees for months without the farm bots noticing?_

_Looking around, he saw the cafeteria in a mixture of joy and uproar. A few people managed to start yelling "Where is the overseer? Who's been screwing around?", but most of them were busy with their various gifts. Stanley smiled as he was presented with a loaf of wheat bread, and sitting next to him James was given the jar of strawberry jam the children had found earlier. Looking at one another, Stanley quickly said "You want some toast for that jam?" James' response was simply "You want some jam with that toast?"_

_An hour later, the overseer turned away from his morning paperwork and consulted the surveillance system installed in the vault. Much to his surprise, there was no one in engineering. Flipping through the cameras, he found that no one was in the security office, classroom, or even the rec room. The next camera was the most shocking of all. He found that most of the vault's population was still in the cafeteria, but they were accompanied by some of the strangest music he had ever heard coming over the room's intercom system. At that very moment, Stanley walked into the room and said "Alright, I've got the computer running all the classic Christmas songs in the database. Now, who wants to dance?" The room burst into cheers as various couples got out of their seats and moved to the unusual beat._

_Bursting out of his office at the speed of sound, he arrived at the cafeteria just in time to see quite possibly the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Every single one of the special items he had stashed in his private refrigerator was spread over the various tables, with an apple core right at his feet. The room had been hastily decorated with streamers, and people were dancing to the tune of a most annoying song which kept repeating the words "rockin' around the Christmas tree" every so often. To top it all off, there was a sight in the back of the room that paralyzed him, and permanently set another memory of hatred in his mind when it came to Michael._

_Amata and Michael were talking quietly, enjoying the occasional thank you from the other residents as they moved around the room. Michael quickly remembered that he hadn't gotten Amata anything, and he asked "Hey Amata? You said that I could get you something for Christmas? What exactly were you talking about?_

_She blushed. "Well, there is this tradition with a thing called a mistletoe...."_

_"Okay, where do I find one of those?"_

_"You can't really, it's some kind of plant that definitely doesn't grow in the vault."_

_"Okay, well then here." He ripped up a sleeve of one of the old jumpsuits they had wrapped the gifts in, and proceeded to tie the strips together in a strange fashion. "Sort of looks like a plant, eh? A blue plant anyway."_

_Amata smiled. "It's the thought that counts. You've gotta hang it over the door."_

_"This is complicated, but how am I supposed to say no to Christmas tradition?" He scrambled onto a table next to the cafeteria's rear door and carefully tucked a 'leaf' of the plant into the bottom of the exit sign, allowing it to hang over the edge of the door. "Okay, what now?"_

_"Come over here." She stood in the middle of the door and waited until Michael walked under the mistletoe. She sprang on him and, whether he wanted it or not, planted a huge kiss on his lips. To her surprise, he returned the kiss after she stopped and whispered "Merry Christmas."_

_The sight caused the overseer to lose control of what little sanity he had left. The angriest scream ever uttered by a human being left his mouth, causing everyone to stop in their tracks. His scream was misinterpreted by several residents, as they began to shout various phrases such as "He's right! Fuck partying, let's find the son of a bitch who made this stuff!"_

_Not a single person, even the officers, told the overseer who had brought them the goods. Instead, the officers had questioned everyone, even him, as to where the difficult to manufacture items had come from. After getting nothing from the interrogations, the officers decided to check the programming of the food synthesizers. Amazingly, someone had been stupid enough to not manually enter any orders, but leave a program inside that was linked to a specific terminal. Five minutes of work found out that the terminal in question was the one in the overseer's quarters, and that the special orders were to be delivered via robot to the overseer's quarters weekly. When officers Wolfe and Taylor had come to his office that night and demanded that he follow them to the security office, he was scared for the first time in his life._

_After arriving at the office, he found all the officers present and waiting. As the current chief of security, it was no surprise that officer Hannon began the proceedings. "Alphonse Almodovar, evidence has been presented that you are guilty of endangering the vault by squandering precious resources on yourself. The law states that you are entitled to some benefits, dietary included, for being in the position of the overseer, but what you have done is just plain ridiculous. There is no punishment laid out for an overseer who is accused of these crimes, and we have decided that your exposure to the rest of the vault will be retribution enough for the people, provided that you also make a public apology at lunch tomorrow. You may continue your previous actions, since they are legitimately part of the rules set down before the war, but it will be strictly monitored, and you will not go so far again. Is this understood?"_

_The overseer could hardly believe his ears. In less than a minute, the security officers had rebelled, cast judgment on him, and then reinstated him on the condition that he apologized for his actions. The usual fire of power rose up inside him, and instead of the answer the officers expected, the man stated "I will only make an apology if those who found these items are present. I want to congratulate them and make sure that the vault knows what kind of citizens they are."_

_Several of the officers snickered at the suggestion, and officer O'Brian said "Come on out kid." During the entire time, Michael had been sitting around the corner in the open detention cell, listening to the proceedings. Knowing how the overseer would come down on Amata, he had convinced her earlier to let him take the blame. "It's my fault sir. You left the door unlocked, and I was trying to find Amata. I was gonna give her a gift because I had found out about Christmas, but what I found was way more than any one person should have. So, I decided to try giving it all to everyone, and look how happy they were. Today's one of the best days ever!"_

_Somehow not surprised to find the brat at the center of the scheme, he could only watch as the officers congratulated him. Again, Hannon spoke to the room. "If this isn't Christmas spirit, I don't know what the hell is. Michael, for your actions leading to the protection of the entire vault's food supply, you are hereby deputized as a junior vault security officer. Please consider all the training we've given you, and are going to continue to give you, to be part of your reward."_

_As the boy walked out of the room, Hannon turned to a visibly shaken overseer. "You are dismissed. Be sure to show up in the cafeteria tomorrow at precisely noon. Michael will be there so you can tell the vault all about him." As the overseer turned to leave, he noticed his bottle of pear brandy on one of the officer's desks, still unopened. "Oh, that?" said officer Gomez. "Michael gave me that for Christmas. Me and the other officers are going to have a little Christmas party of our own after you leave."_

_Forcing a smile, he walked out of the room toward his quarters. The twelve year old had shown him no end of annoyance over the years, and the better behavior he had shown lately had already convinced the other residents that his violent side was simply youthful energy he was growing out of. Stealing his food, stealing his brandy, and even stealing his daughter! He would never touch her again. They would never see each other again! _

Though he still got his pancakes, the synthetic syrup took so much processed fruit and sugar to make that the vault officers had told him that it was not an option. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen" said the overseer to an empty room. The memory of the rare moment of defeat forced his usual conceited attitude to disappear for a moment. He had resolved to ruin the boy every time he had pulled a prank or exposed the excesses that a vault overseer deserved to enjoy. He had failed each time. Although a few people, including several of the security officers, were starting to become jealous of the boy's increased popularity, most of the vault seemed to like him. The comments made by various citizens meant that they expected him to become a security officer or part of the administrative staff, with most believing in the former. The test results Mr. Brotch would be bringing him this afternoon were the only hope he had left, and he knew the chances were slim for the results to be in his favor.

Letting his typical rage boil up once again inside of him, he marched over to Amata's room and resolved he would finally force her to never see Michael again. To his surprise, she was not in her bed or anywhere in her room. "She could not be up this early, could she?" Checking the front door, he found that the inside bolt was still engaged. She had never come home, he would have had to unlock it for her to come in! Unlocking the door and running out into the hall, he proceeded to the living quarters Michael shared with his father.

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A knock at the door so early in the morning was normally something unexpected, but James was sure he knew who was at the door. Putting his best confused look on his face, he opened the door to find the overseer standing outside. "Where is Michael! I must speak to him now!"

"Oh, I think he left early. Probably went to the rec room, or maybe he went to see if Mr. Brotch finished grading his tests."

"Bullshit! Where is he?"

"I don't know. He's not in his room, so I wouldn't search here if I was you."

"Watch that tone James. Get to the infirmary immediately!"

The overseer had become so angry his hands had begun to shake. Stepping over to one of the intercoms, he tried twice to punch in his personal code for a vault-wide address, succeeding on the second try. "Attention! This is the overseer. It has come to my attention that both Amata and Michael did not return to their quarters last night. All officers are to begin searching for them immediately. Anyone who knows the whereabouts of either of them must report it immediately. If anyone is found harboring them, they will face severe consequences. That is all."

Even with the entire vault's security force searching for them, he knew that the odds were slim that they'd actually find anything. He'd woken to find Amata gone several times before, and the first time he had ordered a vault-wide search at three in the morning. The officers searched every room, even the storerooms and the hydroponic facilities, but had found nothing. In fact, an hour into the search she and Michael had actually rounded a corner and walked up to one of the guards, asking what was going on. When the security officials heard the explanation that the kids had gone for a insomnia-curing walk, the officers were outraged that the overseer had woken them over something like this. The overseer was even more outraged, yelling at every officer about how incompetent a person had to be to not find two kids walking down one of the main halls. Discipling the officers and ordering increased patrols had backfired, as they never found anything on subsequent nights when Amata and Michael went missing. Combined with the memory of a certain Christmas party, the officers had nearly rebelled again, telling the overseer that they would not get up or step up patrols again unless someone found a corpse.

The worst thought was that Amata and Michael had spent the entire night together. All the other occasions only saw her gone for a few hours at most. They were both young, but sixteen was enough for teenage hormones to do their work. His worst fears seemed to offer the best explanations, and he resolved that if he found the two of them together he would kill Michael. No accusations, no charges, no detention cell. Michael had ruined his life, but he would not let him ruin Amata's. For once his concerns about his daughter's future overrode his concerns for himself. He walked back to his room and retrieved the 10mm pistol he kept in his desk. "No more!" were the words he shouted before running out of the room.

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"Attention! This is the overseer. It has come......" blared over the vault's speakers, but one particular area was spared from the announcement. Over time, as various systems failed due to age, parts were cannibalized from areas of the vault deemed less important. The idea of keeping the public address system functioning in the rarely occupied hydroponic level had been deemed pointless by one of the previous overseers, and so Michael and Amata were able to continue sleeping in. A search of the hydroponic facilities by two officers yielded no results, as the hideaway the two had been using for years was too high and too dark to reveal anything. After several hours, the entire vault was beginning to panic. The main door was still sealed, every room had been checked. Where were they?

Around eleven, Amata awoke to find that the previous night had not been a dream. Both of them were still together, her on top of him, as they had slept through the night. Taking a quick look at her pip-boy, she was shocked to find out what time it was. She shoved Michael several times, saying "Wake up! We're definitely in trouble!" before he finally woke up.

His lack of knowledge about the time, combined with the grogginess typical of waking, cause a smiling Michael to pull the still nude Amata to him. "Don't care if another war's on, I'm gonna need one thing before I can start my day." She forgot everything for a moment as the two locked into another passionate kiss. "Mmmmm.....look, we've got a serious problem!" she said, holding her pip-boy up near their faces.

"Eleven o'clock? Jesus, we're screwed! Your dad's probably turned out the entire vault by now!"

They both rushed, struggling quickly into their jumpsuits. Michael was still buttoning his shirt as Amata climbed into the vent. "Wait! What's our excuse?" he said.

She turned around. "I.....well.......what the hell can we say? They've probably been looking for us since five or six. Maybe we should just say nothing."

"Amata, that won't work again. I know you're worried about what your dad will do, but we don't really have much choice. We should just tell everyone."

"He'll kill you! I don't mean that figuratively, I mean it literally! He took a gun from the security office a long while back. I know this kind of thing is what he planned to use it for."

"We won't be able to come up with an excuse for this one Amata. We went too far. If we tell everyone else before we tell him, then he can't do anything. He'll be arrested if he tries to do anything to me."

The sad expression on her face changed to an almost-smile. "You said last night that being with me is everything to you. It's the same for me. I can't lose you."

"You won't. I can't die, not if you're with me. And with the rest of the vault on our side, Alphonse can't do anything."

He based everything on trusting the other residents. Could they really count on them for support against her father? It didn't matter, Michael was right. They'd gone too far. It was their only chance. Kissing him once more, she asked "So how are we going to do this?"

"A bunch of people have to be in the cafeteria by now. We'll climb up the main north vent to the secondary filtration controls on that level. From there it's a fifteen-second dash to the cafeteria. As long as we can explain ourselves to all of them, we'll be fine. Please trust me Amata."

Without a single word, she turned around and began following the route he described, him right behind her. She was worried, but the prospect of success quickly suppressed it. She hoped that having Michael with her might be the final key to standing up to her father without caving it.

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The other residents, though still in a panicked state, needed to eat as much as anyone else. There were almost thirty people in the cafeteria when the two star-crossed lovers appeared in the doorway, including several security officers and James himself. What happened next was perhaps the most unusual turn of events that had ever happened in vault 101.

"Everyone, we're sorry for the mess we've made. I sort of made a little clubhouse in a hidden spot in the lower levels of the vault, and I told Amata about it a while back. We both ended up there after the tests, and........we........"

"And we made love to each other" Amata said. "I don't care what anyone thinks. I love him, and I'm not afraid to to say it anymore."

Michael turned to her. "Amata is the perfect woman, and I love her. We've been hiding it because we were both afraid how people would react."

"Obviously, we were mostly worried about my father. But I don't care about any conservatives in the room, I'm done with all this sneaking around. I know we caused you all to panic this morning, and we're really sorry."

The room was so quiet the people could hear the growling stomachs of the breakfast deprived teens. After a near eternity of silence, the first person to speak was Stanley. "You too are exactly like me and my wife were. No one took us seriously, but we loved each other too much to listen to them. We got stern looks from our parents, but we stayed strong, and got married when we were only seventeen. After I've had so many years of happiness, three kids, and five grandkids, I'm not going to condemn you. I wish you two the best luck you can have."

A cheer went up from somewhere in the room, and soon the couple found the entire cafeteria clapping and cheering for them. Pulling Amata close to him, he saw that she had the same joyful tears in her eyes as him. "Told you it would work. Now c'mere, I get the feeling that these people want a little show." Already thinking the same thing, she pulled his head into her face and gave him what Susie had called a french kiss.

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Was it time yet? A shocked doctor named James had been unable to react to the situation, despite his knowledge that the two had been hanging onto each other for some time. He asked himself if his son was really ready to be without a father. Did this mean he could continue the work now that he had stopped so long ago? Could he really leave his son behind anyway, no matter what the circumstances? There was no time for any such answer, as the room seemed to flow toward the couple, with every man wanting to pat Michael on the back and every woman wanting to tell Amata how happy they were. The one thing he knew he had to do immediately was tell his son that he approved, and so he began to swim through the crowed in hopes of reaching him sometime soon.

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The cheer had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the vault, and within minutes everyone on that level had joined in the festivities. Lucy Palmer had climbed behind the counter and declared that she was going to bake the world's largest cake, Christine and Susie began to fight over who would be the maid of honor at the eventual wedding, and officer Gomez told Michael "It didn't take long for my wife to realize that a security officer is the same as everyone else. Amata shouldn't be worried too much about your occupation."

"I'm not an officer yet, and I'm we're not married either, but thanks. I've got a serious problem though. What the hell am I supposed to get a girlfriend for her birthday? I had some stuff in mind, but now we're officially together and I've got a week until her birthday, what am I supposed to get?"

Officer Gomez's face held a wide grin. "I know something. Diamonds."

"What? You mean jewelery? Where the hell can I get that?"

"Hold on, before I say more, let me check something. Don't tell a single person what I just said." Dashing out into the hallway, he ran straight into a surprised overseer and managed to knock him down. "You've got to get inside sir! You're not going to believe the good news!

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The so-called 'good news' was obvious to the overseer. As soon as officer Gomez had rounded the corner, he withdrew his pistol and released the safety. Knowing full well that he would spend the rest of his life in a cell for this, for the first time in his life he thought of his daughter before his position, however misguided his intentions on both parts were.

Usually, when someone walks into a room with a gun, people tend to either scream or shut their mouths. Most people opted for the later, but a few shrieks went up around the room. The officers who were part of the celebration quickly drew their sidearms and yelled "Drop it now!", but they were wasting their breath. Knowing what she had to do, Amata led Michael to the front of the crowd, making certain that she was between him and her father. Though a slight chill first ran through her when she saw her father, the warmth of Michael's hand quickly banished it away. She felt new, free. It was time for her to shove that freedom down his throat.

"You're done! You can't tell me what to do anymore! I'm in love and I don't care what you're going to say. Even if you were happy for me, it's too late for anything you have to say."

The words sent shock waves through the armed father, and his hand began to shake before he steadied himself. "This is for the best, dear. Someday you'll thank me. Now get out of my way."

"Really? Why don't you tell me why it's wrong for me to be with Michael?

The thought of her challenging his will had been absurd up until this point. He thought he had clearly instilled his way into the young woman, but it was obvious he had no power over her anymore. The thought of losing any power had always angered him, and he quickly attempted to rebuke her.

"You're too young to know what's best for you. In time, you'll come to see that what I am doing is for the best of us all. Besides, Michael is a horrible person for you to be with. The fact that he's somehow avoided time in a cell is a combination of luck and bad judgment on the part of several officers."

"Bad judgment? You're one to talk. How'd you avoid jail after that stunt with the vault's food supply? The only thing he's ever done wrong were a few fights and blowing that door open, and that was almost eight years ago. He's perfect in every way, which is more than you can say, given that you're trying to murder him."

He lowered the gun slowly, putting it back into his pocket. "You will listen to me!" To the surprise of the entire room, he sprang forward and attempted to backhand his own daughter,. Before he arrived at his target, Michael quickly stepped around Amata and delivered the most powerful punch he had ever summoned in his life. No precision, no thinking, no skill. Pure rage combined with adrenaline had blanked his mind in the space of a second, and the base instincts in his head directed him to hit Alphonse square in the chest. A still silent room could hear the overseer's sternum crack under the fury of the blow, and he fell to the ground, blood pouring from his mouth before he reached the floor.

At that moment, a bewildered officer Gomez entered the room. Only somewhat surprised to see the overseer on the floor, he moved toward Michael and slipped him a piece of paper. It simply said "The code for the rest of this week is 937658". Michael smiled, thinking briefly about going shopping tonight in the high-security storage room. Turning around, he found that Amata had made her way over to the other side of the room and was sitting in one of the cafeteria's booths. Christine, normally a complete bitch, proved to be unusually sensitive to the situation, sitting opposite Amata and attempting to console her. "It's okay Amata, it's over. You're alive, Michael's alive, and the overseer's still alive, if that's still important."

Amata turned to her newfound friend. "Thank you! Thank you for saying overseer instead of father!" She gave Christine the biggest hug she possibly could. The overseer, still conscious and still listening, felt a final wave of defeat wash through him. She may not have said it outright, but the meaning was the same. I am not your daughter. The phrase echoed in his mind, causing his anger to build and his pain to disappear. One last plan formed in his mind.

Michael moved his way over to Amata. He had basically beaten the hell out of her dad while she was standing right next to him. Even with the situation of Alphonse's attempt to hit her, he was worried how much Amata might hate him for it. As he approached the table she got up to meet him, and the two simply looked at each other for a moment, with the room's attention once again focused on the pair.

"Amata, I.....I'm sorry. I just saw him coming at you and.....I freaked out. I couldn't let him do anything to you, I was so angry that........"

"Shut up and kiss me before I actually listen to what you have to say."

Before either Michael or Amata could move, the room's jubilee was cut short by the sound of a shot. It was strange, he'd never been shot before. He'd never even really been injured, only a punch or a scraped knee in his youth. It hurt, to say the least, but the pain was not what he was surprised by. It was the strange cold feeling that was crawling out of his torso and through his limbs. Two more shots rang out, and twice more Michael felt the impact of lead in his back. His vision began to blur as he fell, and the last sight he remembered was of the overseer, still on the floor, holding his gun while blood dripped from his lips.

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Duh-duh-duh! More to come soon :)


	4. Ain't nothin gonna break my stride

Disclaimer: both spoilers and inconsistencies with the fallout world exist in this story. It's rated M and probably shouldn't be read by any minors. Any and all feedback is great, from hate mail up to suggestions for future chapters. Review, PM, or my profile's email at your leisure.

This chapter deals with the young hero Michael, still sixteen and still not quite a wasteland sheriff. He managed to get himself into quite the situation last time you read this story. But can anything really break his stride?

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Chapter 4 – Ain't Nothin' Gonna Break my Stride

He couldn't see anything, but he definitely knew he was hearing something. It seemed garbled, messed up. He was aware he was being carried, but he couldn't summon the strength to open his eyes. A voice rang out that was clearly his father's, something about stabilizing, but most of the speech he was hearing was still too harsh to understand. He felt a jolt as his stomach made contact with some sort of soft surface. He could feel some kind of a pinprick in his back, then another, and then another. Someone turned his head to the side and put a mask over his mouth and nose. Whatever they were pumping at him, it was great; he breathed deeply several times before the pain forced him to recommit to shorter breaths. Most of the voices around him had seemed to go away, and now it was much easier to hear when only a few people were talking.

"Hang on son! It's gonna be okay!" That was Dad! He was sure of it. If Dad said it was going to be okay, then it was going to be okay. He felt tired, sleepy, but he wanted to stay awake. His memory felt jumbled, he couldn't remember what was going on. He wanted to know exactly where he was, but he wasn't sure how to do that without looking around. Finally managing to open his eyes, he saw the only thing that could calm him more than his dad: Amata. A surge went through his brain, and he remembered everything: the confession, the impromptu party, his proposal, her yes, and then the gun shots. He summoned up every last bit of strength to utter in a gurgling voice "I'm sorry Amata, but that little promise I made last night is going to need to be delayed a few days." She burst into tears, a smile on her face, hugging him as best she could without interfering with the two doctors performing surgery. He closed his eyes with a smile, knowing that when your father and sort-of-brother are the ones operating on you, there's nothing to worry about.

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Something was happening. He couldn't tell what. He felt a strange dryness in his mouth, and he tried to get up, but his muscles would not respond. There was no way he was getting to a water fountain any time soon. Suddenly, he heard a soft beep go off. Then a moment later, another sounded. And another. It was kind of annoying, but an injection of Med-X had seriously hampered his ability to move, meaning he'd be listening for a while longer. He could still remember everything, which was a good sign as far as he was concerned. He struggled to open his eyes, but a piercing white light forced him to close them immediately. "Don't go into the light!", a phrase he had heard on several pre-war shows, immediately came to mind. He tried again to move, but only succeeded in creating a slight twitch in his limbs. He never believed that sort of thing was true, but here it was before him. He opened his eyes slowly this time, carefully letting his pupils adjust.

Thankfully what he saw above him was just a lamp. Whether going into the light meant anything or not, he would not have to find out today. Tilting his head to the side, he noticed that the mask they'd put on him earlier was still there. Annoying as the mask felt, the air being pumped in his face seemed different, almost sweet, so he decided to not try to take it off. Finally moving his head completely to the side, he found the annoying machine that was making the beeping noise. Too far away for him to do anything, he turned his head back over to look at the other side of the room. Amata was on the next bed!

A panic surged through him. Had she been hit? Was she okay? A few moments of careful observation calmed his fears. The expression on her face was troubled, but she had no tubes or wires connected to her. She was still in a jumpsuit, not in one of the weird medical gowns he was wearing.

"She's just sleeping. Waiting for me." He closed his eyes again, pushing the annoying beeping from his mind as he once again felt the dream world embrace him.

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Again, he awoke to hear that stupid beeping noise. He felt better and worse at the same time; the painkillers had worn off, but being able to move a little was worth it. A yawn escaped his lips, and as he tried to open his eyes he heard a familiar voice yell "He's awake! Come here quick!" By the time his eyes were completely open, what seemed to be half the vault had surrounded his bed. He smiled as a burst of sound assaulted his ears, as multiple people attempted to talk to him at the same time.

Finding Jonas at his side, he asked "Amata....Is she alright?" The image of her lying on the next bed was still in his head, and he worried that his earlier diagnosis may have been wrong.

"She's fine, those 10mm rounds practically stop when they hit flesh. You shielded her pretty well, considering that crazy bastard Alphonse might have chosen her as his next target."

"Where....." was all he could say before he heard a familiar voice saying "Move!" Amata was on him in seconds, hugging him so tightly he found it hard to breathe. She moved the mask for a moment to plant a kiss on him, and before the doctor could object she had placed the mask back on. Another familiar voice suddenly sounded, and he saw his dad emerge from the crowd. "Well, I knew I had a warrior son, but taking three gunshots and still breathing? What's a better word than warrior?"

A slight chuckle ran through the crowd, and several people offered their opinions. "Hero?" "Paladin?" "Demigod?" Michael liked the last one, especially since it seemed to get a few laughs from the rest of the crowd. "I'll take demigod, thank you. But how long have I been out, and how's my wounds?"

"You've been under for nearly three days. Thankfully, none of the rounds hit your spinal cord, so don't worry about paralysis. Two of the shots ended up in your left lung, but some oxygen and your right one kept you going until we stopped the bleeding and sealed the wounds. We sewed you up really well, but with this kind of injury even stimpacks aren't helping too much. You're going to need to heal the natural way and rest a while longer."

"Please throw me some water, I feel like I've been eating sand." Amata produced a bottle out of nowhere and, refusing to simply hand it to him, tilted the bottle up for him so he could drink from it. It wasn't quite enough for Michael though. Surprising all those present, he rose out of bed and pulled the various medical instruments from his face and body. "I'm hungry, let's go get something to eat!" He put his hand on his dad's shoulder and took a few steps before his legs started to wobble.

"You've been shot three times and been unconscious for three days! I can't believe you're walking, even with my help! Get back in bed and I'll get you something." The various comments about him, ranging from courage to endurance, and everything in between, were nearly lost on him as his energy level dropped to nothing. After climbing back in bed, his eyes shut on their own, despite his attempts to keep them open. "More sleep...." was the last thing he said before dozing off again.

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Some time later, he woke up once again, except this time feeling much better. The soreness in his back was probably from lying in the same position all night long, or at least that's what he told himself. He jumped out of bed, a decision he later came to realize was not the best idea. Having not been on his feet in a while, his legs collapsed under him as soon as he tried to stand. Impacting the tiled floor with a dull thud, he managed only to say "oww......" before Amata had woken up and rushed over to him.

"Are you alright? Why'd you do that? What hurts?"

He slowly rolled over. "My pride. I get out of bed and have a face-to-face with the floor? Not exactly what was on my list of things to do." She tried to help him to his feet, but even though he obviously was doing okay by himself, she refused to let go of him.

"I have got to take a walk. I have never been this sore before in my life."

"Really? How many times have you been shot before? Could that have something to do with it?"

He simply smiled at her. "I'm fine. You heard the docs, they didn't just sew me up, they gave me some stimpacks too. I need to get up for awhile." He grabbed her hand and squeezed gently. "I feel like I haven't eaten in days! Why don't you take me out to lunch?" He pulled her out of the room, his hand holding hers.

"Technically you've haven't eaten in days. Water and IV's don't count. But before we hit the cafeteria, do you feel like changing?"

"Don't worry, we're stopping at my room first. I hate these gowns as much as any fashion-obsessed woman."

Reaching the door to his quarters, he found the room to be in unusually neat shape, with the floor clean and the bed made. "Who went room raiding on me?"

"Oh....uh.....I didn't want to go back to my place, and when Jonas and James kicked me out of the infirmary, I sort of ended up here. I was so nervous I guess I just started doing things to try to get my mind off the situation. Sorry."

"No apologies allowed! Besides, I can clean up every once in a while. Having a neat girlfriend is fine in my book."

She burst into tears, grabbing him and hugging him as hard as she could. "I can't believe you just said that! I can't believe any of this! I never thought we'd ever be able to be together!"

"Worry no more. I'm here to stay, and I want to stay with you."

Still gripping onto him with the hardest bear hug in existence, she only could say "I like the sound of that! But let's hurry up and get to the cafeteria, so we can get on with our day."

"Well, let me find something better to wear. Don't know if there's a tuxedo in here somewhere, but maybe there's at least a clean suit." He quickly pulled the gown over his head and started rummaging through his dresser drawers.

She feigned a look of innocence. "Make yourself decent!"

"It's nothing you haven't seen before, at least since last night. Wait, not last night. How long was I in that bed?"

Fighting to forget about the fact that the love of her life was standing nude in front of her, she closed her eyes and concentrated on the subject at hand. "As of today, almost a week. We were really worried for about the first hour, but after that the docs came out of the infirmary and said you'd make a full recovery."

"Full recovery? I must not be recovered fully yet, because my back is killing me" he said with a groan. After pulling up a pair of pants, he bent over backwards as far as he could and stretched his arms. "This vault needs a masseuse."

"No it doesn't! No other woman's touching you! Lie down on the bed!" With a chuckle in his voice, Michael said "I never said it needed to be a girl. Guys can be masseuses too." as he climbed onto his freshly made bed.

"Whatever. I'm the one who's going to be rubbing these wounds away." She straddled his lower back and started to gently work the muscles in his shoulders. She felt fascinated with the sight before her, knowing that the three small bandages on him covered wounds that would have killed a normal person. "Hey Amata, would you mind pulling one of those bandages off and seeing if everything is okay? They really itch, but I'm not just going to rip them all off."

She slowly pulled one of the bandages from his skin, watching carefully for any sign of pain from him. He was right about his wounds, the only thing left was a few tiny scars from the surgery and a white circle of new skin that stood out against the rest of him. She slowly traced her finger around the small dimple, trying to imagine exactly how he felt. A low moan escaped from him.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No, it's just really sore. Does it look okay?"

"This one looks fine. Want me to get rid of the others?"

"Of course!"

She pulled both the other bandages off him quickly, producing an "Owww! Hey! Come on, seriously?" from him. He tried to get up, but she pushed him back down. "I said I was going to rub these wounds away, and that's what I'm gonna do." Working on his shoulders again, she let her hands slowly move around, massaging every muscle she could find. Several minutes later, as she was working on his lower back, she felt a familiar tingle begin to build up in her. As though he could feel the same thing, Michael said "As much as I want to take this further, I'm surprised no one has busted in the door looking for me. We should probably grab some food or at least make an appearance."

Sighing reluctantly, she got up and allowed him to get to his feet. "I know, I know. But it's been a week. I was in the mood for more before you were shot, how do you think I feel now? It's gonna be hard to wait until we can get back to that."

"Hard? I'm the one with a log in my pants."

"Michael! Just put a shirt on already!"

"What, no sexy talk? Besides, take a look, I'm not lying."

Taking a quick glance, she moved her eyes down and back up, trying to ignore the ideas going through her head. "Let's just go get that food you were talking about." With a smirk on her face and a song in her heart, she led Michael down the hallway, happy to finally be able to continue where they'd left off.

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No one had noticed that the infirmary was empty yet, so the cafeteria again became the scene of celebration as everyone rejoiced in the sight of the healed vault guardian. "Yes, I'm back on my feet, and all I want is a giant bowl of mush, please!" Half a dozen people jumped behind the counter and tried to see who could get food to the hungry teen first. Even with the help, he was barely able to choke down the food with all the people talking to him. Fortunately, Amata managed to deflect most of them by pushing him into a corner booth and sitting next to him.

First was Jonas. "You sure you should be up? I know what we did to you on that table."

"Do I have to take my shirt off and show you? I'm fine Jonas, now's not the time for the concerned older brother routine, just the happy routine."

Next in line was Lucy, or grandma Palmer to Michael. "I said I was going to bake you two the world's biggest cake, and I wasn't lying! An hour from now that oven is going to produce the sweetest treat you've ever had. Everyone, we've got two things to celebrate today; Michael's alive and Amata's turning 16. How about that?"

After a burst of cheer and applause, it was Amata who responded to this statement. "Thank you Mrs. Palmer. I get the feeling that a giant cake is exactly what everyone needs about now."

Michael laughed. "Definitely, especially after a week like this. As soon as I get enough mush in me to survive, you all have to distract Amata while I grab her that gift."

More cheers burst out through the room. Most of the women in the room literally dragged Amata out of her seat, trying to explain that they had to get her ready for the party. Every man in the room crowded around Michael and told him what they thought was a good idea for a gift.

"I'm loving the advice, really, but I already had something in mind. Does that thing you gave me still work Gomez?"

"Follow me, we don't have time to wait until dark. Just hope whoever sees us doesn't care."

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Dragged into Beatrice's room, Amata was surprised to find that the eccentric woman not only had a walk-in closet, but it was filled to the door with all kinds of not so vault-standard clothing. "Why in the world do you have all these?" was the response from several of the younger women in the room, including Amata.

Ellen let the young girls in on the secret. "She's got to be the only woman in the vault who wouldn't parade around in sunday dresses if given the chance. Some major arguing after the vault closed meant us girls needed to form a pact so we didn't tear each apart. One of the things we all have to agree on is who takes care of the treasures, this closet among them."

Beatrice was quick to counter. "The reason I don't want to parade myself around all day is because I'm the least conceited person in the vault. Because we're careful we've still got a lot of them after two hundred years."

Amata frowned. "There was more?"

"Nearly a whole room full two centuries ago, but things fall apart, not to mention get out of hand until we started our rationing system. The only time anyone gets in here is for special events. Now let's stop all this fussing ladies, we've got a birthday lady to take care of! Now, what is it you want?"

She smiled and said "I think I'm going to need this." She pointed at a lacy set of nightwear that could definitely turn any man on. "I think he'll like the leopard pattern, don't you ladies think so? Or maybe that pink lingerie over there."

Though at first the ladies insisted that she pick out something that would be for the party itself, Amata soon convinced them that the real party was going to be later. After finally agreeing with her, the entire room managed to start arguing over the various pieces of sexy sleepwear. They eventually managed to focus on the two Amata had selected earlier. While Amata was trying to decide for herself, Susie managed to sneak up behind her. She whispered in her ear "Well well. Looks like miss virgin gets her magic night after all, and I don't get a show. Not fair. Especially since I never managed to get Michael in bed."

Amata could only smile as she held a lace piece up, trying to imagine how Michael would respond. "You're going to have to offer a much bigger favor than secretly getting me birth control before I can get into something like that."

"How about spicing up the love life? I bet your boy would kill for a threesome, and if I was going to experiment with anyone, it'd be you."

Amata did her best to hide the angry look on her face, but she knew some of it was showing. "For the last freakin' time, stop!"

"Okay, but the offer's still on the table. By the way, you never told me how big he was."

"And you're not going to find out until both me and Michael get comfortable with the idea."

"Oh, he'll definitely be okay with it. Any man would be, assuming you actually told him."

As much as the idea of sharing Michael with anybody else was a negative to her, she did realize that even a guy like Michael would like a second woman at the proverbial party. "It's not happening anytime soon Susie. But for all the help you've given me, I'll try thinking about it, okay? And if it does happen, don't think that you or me will be touching each other. He'd be in the middle."

"Well it's something. Now get up, before someone sees us whispering."

Rising to her feet slowly, Amata declared to the room "I'll just wear the pink lingerie. I know he'll love that." Disappointing half of the women in the room with her decision, she took the clothing and proceeded into Beatrice's bedroom. "Give me five, okay girls? I'm gonna throw this on under my jumpsuit so I can surprise him later."

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Rounding the last corner before the high-security storage room, officer Gomez and Michael both took one look around before disengaging the lock. "Okay, don't take too long. Just lock the door behind you, okay?"

"No problem. Thanks again, I really mean it." Proceeding inside, he looked around for a minute before finding exactly what he was looking for: the shelf marked high value luxuries. It only took him a few seconds to pick a small diamond necklace off the shelf. It was perfect, it was just the right size for Amata, and it was still in a small jewelry case from before the war. Carefully closing the box and slipping it into his pocket, he locked the door and ran back to the cafeteria, hoping to not miss the beginning of the party.

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Luckily time was with him today, and he rounded the corner mere seconds before someone decided to start singing Happy Birthday. Walking up behind her while she was distracted by the song, he grabbed her, spun her around, and pulled her into a deep kiss. Clapping and cheering erupted throughout the room, and didn't start to die down until Michael pulled something out of his pocket.

Being lucky enough to be the first to give Amata a gift, Michael handed her the small box and simply told her "Happy Birthday." The room was filled with gasps as she revealed the contents of the small box to be a beautiful diamond necklace. There were a lot of whispers, most concerning where Michael had acquired such an item. One comment in particular stood out from the others. "How the hell is anyone supposed to top that?"

She held it up to her neck and didn't move, waiting for him to secure it. He reached behind her and attached the clasp. "I told you the vault would back us up, and a week later we're here because of them."

"I'm glad I listened to you. Once more I feel like I'm in paradise."

"Does paradise include cake? Fortunately, Andy isn't going to ruin this one."

"No, but cake at my birthday is more important than at yours, wouldn't you say?"

He simply smiled. "All right, who's got a knife?"

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For the young couple, the next hour was spent eating cake, being congratulated by everyone in the vault, and enduring a rendition of the song "Discovery Channel", which had somehow been added to the playlist being broadcast on the cafeteria speakers. Separating briefly to talk to different people in the room, Michael quickly found someone who'd decided to get him a gift instead of Amata. Mr. Brotch came over to him and simply said "Are you ready for both good news and bad news today?"

"Well, I guess. Bad news first, spill it!"

He smiled. "First of all, the overseer's quarters are being assigned to the Mitchell family. No one's told Amata yet, and to be honest I'm not sure how I'm supposed to."

"Uh, why? Why is Thomas's family getting the overseer's place? And since when are you in charge of room assignments? "

"Since the overseer's post is presently vacant, jobs have been temporarily split up and assigned to officials in other positions. As for Amata, room assignments are mostly mandatory, I really didn't get any power when I got this position. Sorry, but Mitchell's already practically the vice overseer, if there was such a thing, which means the vault's deluxe quarters fall to him. Rumor has it that the council is going to be naming him as the new overseer anyway instead of putting through any kind of reform."

"Council? Help me out here, I've been in a hospital bed for a few days."

"With the overseer incident, a temporary council has been formed to keep the vault running until the issue of a new government can be decided. If you're ready for the good news, you should know that they also decided to grant me the power to assign the results on the tests, at least for this cycle. Congratulations, you are officially a vault security officer!"

"Awesome! Finally! Just give me my 10mm and call me Dirty Harry!"

Mr. Brotch's face changed to a slightly sullen expression. "I really hope that I didn't make a mistake with this. You do know what kind of power you're going to be wielding?"

"Aw, now I can't even make a joke? Besides, Harry had a .44"

"Fine Michael, but try to wake up every day realizing the difference between the vault and the movies. Speak with one of the officers and they'll set you up for your first day."

"Hold on. Where are Amata's things being taken?"

"To the Mitchell's old quarters. Just a straight up exchange for now. It's kind of sad that she's going to be living alone in a large place meant for a family of five."

"Can you get some people to take my stuff to her new room before the end of the party?"

"What? Are you sure she wants that?"

"Of course. I'm pretty sure anyway. But if worse comes to worse, one of us can say that it was the logical choice in the situation, and then apologize for making a mistake."

"Sly devil. I'll get on it, but you'll have to be the one to pop the news to her. Good luck."

Abandoning Mr. Brotch as soon as the last word had left his mouth, he started looking around for the nearest man in a security vest. After a few minutes of searching, it was officer Gomez who managed to find him. Tapping Michael on the shoulder, he said "Congratulations and a lifetime of happiness! Surviving three bullets is something to be proud of. But it's time for a little good news."

"Too late, I know I'm a vault security officer! When do I report for duty?"

Officer Gomez chuckled, slapping Michael on the shoulder before saying "Just show up tomorrow at the security office and we'll get you set up."

"Wait, do you know what's going on with the vault government? And that one crazyass bastard who shot me? The security officers have to be in on the details."

Gomez frowned. "The temporary council seems to want to reinstate an overseer, even though some of us would like to switch to some kind of democracy. Most people think what happened was just a fluke, and the current notion is to put Thomas Mitchell in his place."

"Yeah, I heard. But why does it have to be him? He doesn't like me either."

"Because he's one of the senior shift supervisors, and he's got the most experience of any of the candidates. If we're going to put things back the way they were, he's the likely choice. As for Alphonse, the council sentenced him to life imprisonment. Why they didn't use the death penalty is beyond me, he's just going to eat food he doesn't work for and take up our only security cell."

With a frown on his face, Michael said "Thanks for the information" and proceeded to continue mingling with the rest of the people in the room. A few hours passed, and slowly the party died down until only a few people were left in the cafeteria, as the robot Andy beginning his clean-up program.

Meeting back together after chatting with half the vault, the couple joined hands and sat down at one of the few tables that was not covered in food, dishes, or wrapping paper. "Amata, I've got to tell you something. The Mitchell's are moving into the overseer's place."

"What? He's gone, but I'm still living there!"

"I know, but the vault's dead set on making him the next overseer. It's how it goes."

"You mean I'm being assigned to the Mitchell's place? You could fit five or six people in there."

"That means two would be okay, right? I sort of made a request that my things be moved to the Mitchell's old quarters too. If you're okay with it."

The look of surprise on Amata's face could not be matched by anyone else in history. Though Michael had thought she might suspect he wanted her to move in with him, it seemed as though it had never crossed her mind. He thought to himself "Crap, did I go too far?"

The opposite was actually the truth. She said "I can't believe it! I was worried that you would draw the line at sharing quarters. This is great news! Even if I wasn't forced out of my place, I'd take you up on the offer."

"I was worried you'd think I was a stalker or something."

"On the contrary, I think it's great to be sharing a room now that we've finally gotten our acts together. Speaking of which, you should know that I stepped out for a little bit during the party and stopped by the med synthesizer. Maybe we should go start another party."

Michael smiled his typical scoundrel grin as he picked her up right out of her seat and carried her out into the hallway

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After Michael carried Amata all the way to their new quarters, they found that several people had already helped bring their things to the room. "I told you that we could count on the people who live in this vault. We went from Romeo and Juliet to the happiest people in the world because we gave a few people our trust. Aren't you glad I was right?"

She simply smiled at him and said "Okay! But put me down already, I want to look around."

"Your stuff's already here. There's only one place we need to head to." he said, carrying her toward the master bedroom.

"You horndog! Can't you think about anything else?"

"Hey, you said this morning that you were already in the mood for more. Now I can't be the one who gets to say "Let's fuck!"?"

"Don't be like that! You're ruining the mood." She pulled his face closer to her and whispered "I picked out a present for you earlier today. Sit back and enjoy."

Setting her down, he let her push him onto the bed and slowly pull his shirt off. As he sat up, she produced a silk scarf from her jumpsuit pocket and loosely tied Michael's hands together behind his back. "No touching this time, naughty boy." Even though he could easily just snap the fabric off, it was a definite turn on for him, and Amata could see it in his eyes.

Carefully tracing her hands down his now exposed chest, she lightly brushed her fingers downward, over his stomach, thighs, and ending at his knees. Drawing herself back, she moved her hands up and down herself as she swayed side to side. It took what seemed like an eternity to Michael for her to get the top of her jumpsuit undone, but it was worth the wait. Turning her back just as the last button was undone, she slowly pulled her top off to reveal a pink lace bra strap running across her back.

"Jesus...." was all Michael could say as she turned around. Finding a diamond necklace is one thing, but he had no idea that clothing like that even existed in the vault. The jumpsuit extruders were definitely not programed for that sort of thing. "Amata, if I can't use my hands, I'm gonna need help here. My zipper is killing me."

Without a word she slowly moved her way over to him, placing her chest in his face while undoing his zipper. "My my, we have ourselves a jack in the box here today." Stepping back a few, she let him sit there on the bed and continued where she had left off.

"Ohh! Just the unzip?"

"I thought you once said waiting was half the fun." She smiled as the frown on his face quickly turned upside down. Continuing to move her hips in that oh-so-arousing fashion, she pulled the waistband of her pants to the floor, exposing the matching panties that she was wearing. Pulling one leg out, she used her other to kick the pants into the air. She had originally wanted them to land on his crotch so she could make a 'tent' reference, but instead she ended up hitting him in the face.

"Ow! Little violent don't you think? But if you want to get kinky, I could find a whip."

She giggled, pulling the pants off his face. "I'm trying to be a seductive tease! Don't make me laugh!"

"Baby, whenever you're happy, I'm happy. Making you laugh is an instinct for me."

She was just as anxious as he was; she couldn't hold back much longer. Cutting to the chase, she thrust her busom into his face and undid the clasp, revealing her beautiful breasts to the man she loved. It was nearly too much for Michael. "Oh god, Amata, I just can't take it anymore!"

"Only one more minute." She turned around and bent over, placing her rear less than an inch from his face. She slowly pulled down the silk fabric, expecting nothing other than another gasp from Michael. He may have had his hands tied, but he had another idea. Leaning forward, he swiped his tongue across her labia.

She jumped at the unexpected contact, falling backward onto him. Both of them laughing, she pulled her panties the rest of the way down and turned over, placing her hands on his chest. "Michael, do you want this as much as I do?"

"You know it. Otherwise I wouldn't really be comfortable with you tying me up."

She pulled his pants down and slowly moved herself back up him, stopping as his manhood rubbed against her. She stopped for a few moments to think. "I change my mind Michael. Get up."

He sat up slowly, Amata still in his lap. "What do you mean?"

The look on his face was one of extreme discomfort. What had she said? "Oh, no, I don't mean that. I mean this." She reached around behind him and untied the scarf. "I want you to take me." She rolled over onto the other side of the bed, beckoning him with one finger to follow. He gladly rolled over, supporting himself on his hands above her, his body just barely making contact with hers.

She gently grabbed him, guiding his member to her womanhood. "This is it Michael. I've been waiting for this day to finally come."

"Me too." He slowly moved himself forward, entering her for the first time. As they both expected, he soon ran into something. "Amata, I.....I don't want to hurt you."

She simply smiled. "It might hurt a little, but if this is even half as good as when we were down in your secret spot, it'll be well worth it." She wiggled her way a little closer to him, and he began to feel the pressure increase slightly. A small pang of discomfort crossed her face, and Michael pulled himself closer for a kiss. With his mouth still on Amata's, he moved his hips forward.

A small cry escaped her mouth. Michael stopped immediately, looking at Amata with a pang of regret in his heart. She opened her eyes and briefly smiled before the same expression of pain came back to her face again. "Just don't move for a minute. Let me just lie here with you inside me." After a few moments, she brought her face back up to his and kissed him briefly. "Thank you. I know it was harder for you than me. Now, how much of that thing do you think you can fit in me?"

Smiling, he moved forward slowly, both of them staring down as they watched his organ disappear. She winced briefly and he stopped, but she grabbed his shoulders and barely whispered "Keep going." He moved forward again, with even more care than before, until he was completely within her.

"Are you okay?"

She looked into his eyes. "Yeah, but maybe just to be safe, you should pull it out. Then put it back in to make sure."

He didn't respond with anything but a grin. Withdrawing slowly, he entered her again with the same delicate speed. "I'm fine Michael, show me what it means to be a woman." He repeated his actions, increasing his speed each time. A low moan came from her, and she said "Faster!" Responding as best he could, he pumped into her as swiftly as his muscles allowed him..

Her moan became a constant hum, increasing slowly as she felt herself building up inside. She could feel it, she was on the edge, and then it hit. Waves of pleasure coursed through her body, and she screamed out as her orgasm rippled through her. He felt her contract around him, the pleasure building up within him finally plateaued as he unleashed a river of his seed inside her, roaring as if he were a wild beast. Their cries slowly faded, replaced by smiles and the deepest looks two people can give one another.

Slowly withdrawing his now softened member from her, he moved over to her side and pulled her to him. "That was amazing. I can't begin to describe how you make me feel."

"Mmmm. Same here. I felt like I was exploding. I hope you can keep up with me, because we are definitely doing this more often."

He pointed downward. "This your definition of keeping up?" Her eyes following his hand, she was amazed to find that sixty seconds had been long enough for him to become hard again.

"Definitely. But roll over, my second time is gonna have me on top."

"As you command, my princess."

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Looks like our sheriff has finally managed to find paradise. Nothing lasts forever though. How will the future turn out for him? Is it all lust, or are the two meant to be? BTW, all props for the phrase "that one crazyass bastard" comes from the title of one of my favorite fallout stories on this site. MythicDawn12, keep the stories coming, and thanks for all the reviews.


	5. Paradise Lost

Same disclaimer as the first chapter. Both spoilers and inconsistencies with the Fallout world exist in this work of fiction. Rated M for violence, language, sex, use of drugs and alcohol, and generally bad stuff.

It's been three years since our hero got everything he wanted. A beautiful girl, a job as a security officer, shaky peace with the Tunnel Snakes gang, and his only real archenemy is in jail for life. A guy like this would never want to leave vault 101. Nothing lasts forever though. Here's how Michael finally ended up in the wasteland.

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Chapter 5 – Paradise Lost

"SCREECH!"

Awakening to the world's most annoying sound, he simply turned off the alarm instead of flipping it off first, as was his usual routine. It was yet another new day for the young hero. Carefully pulling himself out of bed, he found that he had still woken Amata despite his best attempts.

"Sorry."

"Why? That alarm could wake the dead."

"Yeah, but you don't have to wake up for a few more hours. I've got morning patrol today."

She pulled back the covers, revealing that she was still just as naked as him. "So I'm up a little early. I'm kind of cold, maybe a hot shower would be nice...."

Michael smiled. "That sounds like a perfect idea." Following her to the bathroom, he climbed in the shower after her and closed the door. She stood to the side and quickly turned on the faucet, hitting him with a jet of cold water.

"Hey, what the......." She giggled, switching it to warm water. "Oh, are you cold? Let me warm you up." They pulled each other close, kissing just as passionately as the first time they were able to be together. Reaching down, she found that he was already erect and ready to go. Stroking him slowly, she said "Well, I guess you're not as cold as I thought."

With a smile on his face, he picked her up by her thighs and held her close to him. "Want to try something a little different?"

"You really think you can hold me up while we both have an orgasm?"

"I could never get tired if I'm holding you."

She brought her legs up and locked them behind his back. Reaching down, she moved him to the right position before bringing her arm back around his neck. "I'm ready. You sure feel ready. But if you drop me, no sex for a week."

"You and I both know that's as much punishment for you as me." Before she could respond, he thrust all the way into her, producing a gasp from her. Slowly picking up speed, he smiled as he felt her body trembling, approaching orgasm even faster than normal. "Exciting, my little princess?"

She didn't say anything; he was right about the exciting part. Within only a few minutes, a cry escaped her, she arched back and nearly lost her grip on Michael. As he leaned back to compensate, the cosmic dice landed on seven, and he ended up at the perfect angle to stimulate her. Amata's nails dug into his shoulders as she cried out "Oh god, right there. Perfect." Feeling her contract around his member, he held on with every muscle in his body, knowing that he could last long enough to give her another.

Slowly coming down from her first orgasm, the new angle Michael was using had already started her on toward a second. Pumping back against him, it only took a little while longer for her to come close to the same peak as before. She removed one hand from his shoulder and grabbed the back of his head. Looking straight into his eyes, she said "Now. With me."

Both howling like animals, they came with the force of two hurricanes, her contracting like a vise around him as he filled her depths with his warm seed. They stayed there for several minutes, basking in the warm water and one another. Looking at each other, one of them said "We are definitely doing that again sometime soon."

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By eight o'clock both Michael and Amata were clean and satisfied, at least for the moment. Drawing his utility belt around his waist, complete with baton, N99, and two extra magazines, he stopped to check on the extra supplies in his footlocker. Another two extra magazines, a box of 10mm ammo, his security helmet, and his pride and joy: three pipebombs. His explosive tendencies since his youth had never died. Even though they would be useless in 99% of security situations, it was nice to know that he had some home-brewed bombs available if he needed them.

Amata decided to drop the towel wrapped around her while she searched her dresser for a clean jumpsuit. It was difficult at best to leave after the shower, now he felt as though his feet were glued to the floor. "Jesus baby, I wish we had time for more."

She smiled. "Me too, but just think about this: today is the first day of the rest of our lives. We've got the rest of our lives to fuck, how about that?"

"Baby, I am never going to get tired of hearing you talk dirty. See you later." He gave her a deep kiss, and with a smile he walked into the hallway.

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"Well, the sheriff's in a good mood today."

"Aw, come on Kendall, when am I not in a good mood?" Michael's relationship with the other vault officers hadn't improved much, despite his best tries. He responded to even the smallest incidents and did everything he could to help the other vault citizens, but it wasn't what the other officers wanted. As a matter of fact, what pissed them off was that he always tried to help everyone. Some of the people in the vault were starting to view Michael as how a security officer should be, and most of the other officers felt they were starting to look bad. The chief had actually talked to him once about it.

_He was stuck with the late shift that night. It wasn't so bad, except for the fact that nothing happened. Tonight was a little different. _C_hief Hannon came into the office right at the beginning of his shift and gave him a little speech. "There's something I think you need to know. We aren't the sheriffs you watch in those old movies. You're being too helpful; doing extra things for people while on duty is pointless and not part of our job."_

_"I'm sorry if I offended you, but if people need help when I'm around, it seems right. If I should only respond to a big emergency, I could just stay in the office and watch the security cameras."_

_Michael's response, initially meant to simply explain why he worked a little harder, only enraged the chief. "What are you saying? That we haven't been doing our job?"_

_"No, no! I just think that as leaders in the vault, we should concern ourselves with more than just radroaches and the occasional drunk. It sets a good example and it makes our tiny world a better place. Besides, haven't you ever heard of karma? I think that lending a hand to someone will come back around to help you in the future."_

_"Just shut up. There's no curing that vault guardian attitude is there?" Spinning around, he left Michael sitting in the office, _

_Though that conversation hadn't gone over well, Michael didn't change his attitude at all. The next morning, he asked Amata a simple question._

_"Do I really do too much?"_

_"I can't believe you're even thinking that. You're not, it's just the other guys aren't doing enough. So what if you helped Stanley haul a busted robot up some stairs? So what if you went to Mr. Brotch's classroom when he set up a career day for the kids? The other officers are ether pissed because most of the other residents like you or because you've got a conscience."_

That had done it for Michael and afterward he never looked back. It had given him a reputation and a nickname, and he liked both of them. Sheriff Michael. It wasn't Dirty Harry, but it had a ring to it.

Interrupting his reminiscing, Kendall said "Yeah, you're always pretty happy and perky. Not like Mack. Of course, he wants your girl, so he's always pissed around you."

"I know, last time I was on night duty he got drunk, went to our quarters, and tried to...well... seduce isn't the right word, he was pretty aggressive. I think he was one step away from rape when I arrived, and Amata agreed with me."

"Yeah, I know. But that one step is too far for any kind of prosecution. You should watch your back, jealousy can really bite you in the ass."

"I'm more concerned for Amata's safety, but thanks anyway."

They started out on the standard morning shift, one of them on patrol and the other in the office. Obviously, Michael was the one on patrol. The day went normal, if you count helping Mrs. Palmer move a table or helping to lift a parts crate out of storage with Stanley. The one abnormal thing that happened was an offhand comment from Stanley, who said "Thanks for the help. If there were more people like you, I would have fixed that pip-boy upgrade a week ago instead of yesterday."

"You actually fixed one of those old things? Hey, I'm the only officer who doesn't have one yet."

"Oh. Maybe you'll get it."

"Stanley. I know you only work on things like that in your spare time. Many thanks man."

"Don't mention it. Seriously don't. Even if officers are the only ones who get it, and they're prioritized to wear them, technically I not only can't give it to you, I shouldn't even talk about it."

"Alright. See you later."

At the end of his patrol, he was surprised to find the overseer waiting for him in the office. Even though he had gotten a fresh start when Thomas Mitchell took over the position of overseer, he had done two things that put him in the same shape as before. He had voted for a democracy in the council's final meeting three years ago, and had even tried to convince the other residents that it was a good idea. Word got back to Thomas, and he never forgave him for it. As well, Michael was still pushing for opening the vault, at the very least for some kind of recon. Thomas was as dead set as Alphonse on that issue, and had actually yelled at him once in the hall when Michael tried to press the idea.

"How can I help you sir?"

"Well, if you didn't already hear, Stanley fixed one of the old survival upgrades. Since you're the only officer who doesn't have one of them yet, I am forced to give you this one. Don't mistake it for kindness. Since it is the end of your shift, I am extending it long enough to allow the upgrade to be installed."

"Do I get overtime pay?"

The overseer did not even slightly smile. "There is no such pay system. You do your job every day and get your rations because of it."

"Just making a joke sir. It's plenty worth the extra time to have a V.A.T.S., among other awesome upgrades."

Without so much as a goodbye, Thomas left the office. Kendall decided to make another useful comment. "He doesn't really like you."

"I know. Maybe things will change someday, but I still say a democracy is better overall for the vault, and I'm not just going to change my mind until someone gives me a good reason to."

"He'd like you more if you did."

"A little late for that reason, I already said it all. Can't exactly take it back. See you later."

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Arriving at the maintenance office a few minutes later, he found Stanley with his toolkit and the upgrade card already in his hands. "It's finally time to get your upgrade. You know that it comes with a V.A.T.S., right?"

"Yeah, and I'm lucky enough that my own dad will be the one to configure the neural connectors, considering how delicate the interface is."

V.A.T.S., or the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, was an experimental pre-war combat enhancement designed to amplify the reflexes of the user. Through a complicated bio-interface with the nerves in the forearm, commands that had just barely been thought by the user could be interpreted by the system and instantly put into action, hundreds of times faster than a regular person relying on their own reflexes. The only known side effect was that prolonged use could deaden the natural reflexes of even the most agile person, so safeties were built into the system for automatic shutdown when the module determined that the user was exhausted

Most of the experimental models built by Vault-Tec involved some kind of direct wired interface with the nerves in a person's arm, but a mistaken shipment just before the war had sent twenty of the most advanced V.A.T.S. modules to Vault 101. These were designed to use a wireless link that interfaced with the body's nervous system through skin and muscle. Though more difficult to configure, this model was also designed to be used by pip-boys.

The modules were originally prototypes meant to upgrade the standard civilian pip-boy to make it more useful for the military. Nickname the wasteland survival upgrade by the vault's officers, it also included a larger hard drive, a much more powerful radio with signal triangulation, and an extra battery for longer periods without recharging, among other gadgets. After the bombs fell, the modules were placed in high-security storage and only given to officers.

Unfortunately, they were a little more sensitive that other systems. Some of them had started to break down about a century ago, and with Michael's inclusion there were one less than enough for the officers. Neither Alphonse nor Thomas had considered repairing any of them a priority, so the functioning models were given to officers in order by seniority. Even though it wasn't one of the brand new models, it was great that Stanley had spent so much of his free time on one.

"All right, let's get this thing going. I have to physically install the module and configure it via wire connection to my terminal. I can either take your pip-boy off or you can hold still. Which will it be?"

Michael laughed. "Taking it off and putting it back on is a half hour of your time. You've already spent a lot of it on me, I don't mind standing next to a terminal and keeping my arm on a desk for an hour." Stanley may have been one of the oldest residents in the vault, but to Michael that just meant he both had more to talk about, and had also learned what was pointless to say. Wisdom doesn't just come with age, but getting older seems to help.

After an hour of chatting and Stanley typing, he removed the cable and shut the outer casing of the pip-boy. "All right, she's good to go, but the V.A.T.S. won't work until you get a doctor to configure the neural connection."

"Lucky me. I'm sort of a novice when it comes to medicine, but I happen to have a family member who knows a few things."

---------------------------------------------------

Ever since Michael had moved out of the quarters they shared and in with Amata, James didn't see Michael as often. It hadn't really bothered him; kids grow up and that's just the way it is. He knew that he'd have to leave Michael behind one day anyway, but he hadn't suspected he would grow up so fast. A security officer and virtually married at age 16, and that was three years ago. Could he have left then? What was really still keeping him here? The supplies in his closet were all ready to go, he'd already hacked the codes he would need. He could leave tonight if he wanted.

"Knock knock, stop all the deep thinking." Michael had walked into the infirmary, still dressed in his standard security vest. "I have a few issues. Amata doesn't get off till eight and I'm free for a while. I also need a doctor to help me configure a V.A.T.S. system."

"I think you made the free part up. You could do other things."

"No dad, I barely see you anymore. Between the job and the girl, we just don't get as much time as we used to. I miss Jonas too, you know he's a brother to me."

"I know. Let's get you over to a terminal and get you ready to take on some giant radioactive mutants."

After about ten minutes, James had managed to link the system to Michael's nervous system. He even configured the hands-free option, so that when Michael flicked his left wrist backwards, the system would automatically engage. "Can't have you reaching to push a button in battle. Time is everything."

"I suppose you would know."

The words hit James like a bag full of bricks. Had he found out that they'd both been outside the vault before? He gave Michael another of his inquisitive looks, hoping to pry information out of him without saying anything.

"Sorry dad, just a joke. I didn't mean to insult you or anything."

"It's okay. Really. So how have things been going lately?"

After talking for a while, the conversation started to go in a bad direction. Lately, his father had been pushing even harder to get the vault opened up. "Dad, you have to step back the arguing with the overseer. I agree that opening the vault is a good idea, but for now pushing the issue any further is pointless. I can't help you much more either, Thomas already hates me for trying to keep him from becoming king of the vault."

"Michael, I understand, but you need to realize that this is more important than you."

"Yeah, yeah, the future of the vault depends on it." James almost told him that it was actually the outside world that might benefit more if he was allowed to leave, but something like that would only provoke more questions, such as how James could possibly know anything about the wasteland.

"Look, I'm being serious here. I need you to promise me one thing. If they do ever open the vault, you must never leave."

"Uh, dad, are you nuts? I'm probably one of the best people in the vault for that sort of thing. I already volunteered too."

"I know, but I need you to promise me. I won't be around forever, and this is something I need you to do. Promise me."

"Sorry dad, but that's not going to happen."

"You can't do that. Think about your future. You can't leave Amata behind, what if something happens to her?"

The words were bad enough, but the lecturing tone was something Michael hadn't heard since childhood. It was more than enough to get him a little angry. "The advice is wonderful, but I can take care of myself. Nothing bad would ever happen to her or me."

"You really think you're ready to go out into a world you know nothing about? Don't argue with me, you know I'm right."

That was too much for Michael. "Oh yeah, sure. You know everything about how it is outside the vault. For your information, I can take care of myself. A three hour tour could never do anything to me, and I'd never leave the vault for any extended period of time unless Amata had already said she wanted to go outside too."

"You'd really risk her life? That's absolutely moronic."

"No, what's moronic is standing there and trying to tell her she can't do something because I say she shouldn't. Oh wait, that's what you're doing right now to me. Nice talk dad, but I gotta get going."

As his son stormed out of the office, it finally hit James. He had moved out, he had his own position in the vault, and he had a woman he loved. Now, he was old enough to argue with his father as if they were equals. He was fully grown. It was time. He stepped up to the intercom and rang Jonas' room.

"Jonas, it's James. I need to speak with you for a minute."

----------------------------------------------------

Arriving to find Amata already in bed and sleeping, he took a quick look at the terminal. "Sorry, but I need to cover a shift tomorrow morning, and I'm already sleepy. XOXO."

He smiled. He'd told her before that a change of plans didn't mean she had to leave a note for him, but she still did it every time. Even when it was as simple as going to bed early. Stripping off his vest and belt, he climbed carefully into bed with Amata. Putting his arm around her, he silently whispered "It's okay. I was kind of tired too. Good night."

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A loud alarm went off, but he was sure it wasn't his clock. They weren't quite loud enough to get Michael out of bed. Rolling over, he noticed his alarm hadn't gone off yet. As well, Amata had already left for work. A groggy and sleep-obsessed Michael somehow decided ignoring the sirens was the best solution, and within a minute he had fallen back asleep.

A short time later, he was again awaken, but this time by something much more important. "Wake up, quick! You've gotta wake up!"

"Amata, what's wrong? You look pretty freaked out."

"Your dad! He left the vault!"

"What? That's impossible! The vault's been sealed for two hundred years!"

"I don't know how he did it, but he did! You've got to follow him, a lot of people are pissed off and they are not coming for a talk."

"I had no idea he was leaving! I didn't do anything! I'll just tell them the truth Amata, it'll be okay."

"No it won't! They killed Jonas! Just because they thought he'd helped your dad!"

"WHAT? Why didn't you say something first? Fuck leaving, those assholes are gonna pay." He quickly strapped on his vest and retrieved his weapons.

"You can't! All the vault security officers are with the overseer. There's too many of them. I can't let you commit suicide."

"The officers are the only ones. Everyone else in this vault is either neutral or on my side."

"Don't count on it! You know the overseer will spin this situation around to make you look like the bad guy, especially if you kill any of the other officers."

He thought briefly. Couldn't stay, she was right about the suicide part. Surrendering would probably get him killed like Jonas. No other choices left but to run. "Amata, I....I guess you're right. Do you know anything else?"

"I found out that there's a secret tunnel in the overseer's office that leads to a room right next to the vault's exit. Some security officers are bound to be along all the normal routes; the only way is through that tunnel."

He finished putting on his gear and started to put some of his things, including his pipebombs, into a backpack. "Amata, take this." He handed her his N99 pistol.

"What? Are you kidding? You'll need that!"

"Amata, I can keep myself safe. But you've warned me and they might find out. You'll need this, just keep it hidden in your jumpsuit for me."

"Alright. Be careful, I'll just walk to the overseer's office as if I knew nothing. They're not looking for me after all."

"You be careful too. Wait a few minutes so we're not seen together, then take the main hall to the office. I'll take the long way to avoid the other officers." He pulled her in for a quick kiss before donning his helmet. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Looking around the corner, he saw that officer Kendall was coming down the hallway, obviously here to retrieve him. "Stop now, in the name of the overseer!" It was the last words he ever said. Before Michael could react, several radroaches scuttled out of the adjacent hallway and began to gang up on Kendall. After a lucky hit that knocked him down, one of the radroaches crawlled onto him and sunk its teeth deep into Kendall's neck. He never had a chance.

Kendall may have been coming after him, but the two had worked together for years, and Michael still considered him a friend. Enraged, he drew his baton and charged forward into the trio of pests. Putting all his weight into the move, he brought down his foot on one of the roach's bodies and nearly severed it in half. Swinging his baton like a madman, he easily took down the other two roaches, only suffering a small bite on his boot. "Sloppy." he thought to himself. "Can't get mad, I have to concentrate on the situation. Think. Okay, officer's aren't the only problem. Turning off the main lights and putting us on emergency darkened us enough to draw out a lot of radroaches. Gotta watch out for them."

He stripped Kendall of his pistol and extra ammunition, feeling better now that his holster was full again. Proceeding down the hall, he quickly ran into Butch. "You've gotta help me! My mom is trapped in their with some roaches!"

"I have to say it: I don't like you Butch. You've always been an ass to me. But I'll do it, if only for your mom. No one deserves that." He carefully walked into the room, and found three roaches attacking Ellen. She wasn't likely to suffer Kendall's fate; she was curled up and protecting her vitals. However, it was only a matter of time before one of the giant bugs got a good bite on one of her limbs. The roaches were distracted enough by their first prey that Michael was able to crush them one at a time with his baton before they turned around.

"Are you alright Mrs. DeLoria?"

She got up. "Yeah, just a few scratches. I wish Butch had your guts."

"Give him a little more time. He'll be a tough guy yet."

He turned around and walked back into the hallway. "Don't worry Butch, she's okay. Seal your door and wait for all this to blow over."

"You're the best man! Hey, you're following your dad right? If you're gonna survive out there, you'll need these." He pulled off his Tunnel Snake jacket and handed it to Michael. "Anyone who isn't blind will know you're in a badass gang; it should help you avoid any bitching troublemakers out there. And here, this will help the ones that won't shut up." Butch pulled his brass knuckles out of his pocket and handed them to Michael. "Good luck Tunnel Snake!"

He smiled as he slipped the jacket into his pack and the brass knuckles into his pocket. "Thanks Butch. If I ever get to come home, I'll make sure to bring you a nice gift." Maybe there was hope for the greaser yet. After rounding a few more corners and ascending a flight of stairs, he found officer Gomez taking on some radroaches. Though outnumbered, the robot Andy quickly came to his assistance with his blowtorch attachment, which made a handy flamethrower under the circumstances.

Noticing Michael, officer Gomez through up his hands and yelled "Stop! I'm not after you!" Both officers put down their weapons, and fortunately neither of them were betrayed by the other. "I don't how your dad left or if you even have anything to do with it, but you should leave too. I'm sorry, they killed Jonas, there was nothing I could do. You have to leave the vault, they'll probably kill you too."

"I know. I ran into Amata. She told me."

"Jesus....I'm sorry for...."

"Don't be sorry for things you can't control."

He nodded, his expression changing from sorrow to a more neutral one. "Go raid the infirmary, the medical supplies will help you survive out there. Stanley's in there, maybe he can do something for you."

"Thanks man. You were always the best officer in this hole. You actually gave a shit about everyone else."

"I could say the exact same thing about you Michael. Hurry up before more officers start coming down here, I know Kendall was already supposed to go retrieve you."

"He's dead. Ambushed by roaches."

"Dammit. Why the hell did they turn off the main lights anyway? All it did was pull out the roaches."

"I know. I've got to get going, just stay here and keep Stanley safe. Say you were in the infirmary the whole time and I never came here."

"Will do. Be careful."

Taking several handfuls of stimpacks and med-x, he put a few of them in his pocket and the rest in his pack. He noticed the old vault-boy bobblehead on his dad's desk and, after thinking for a moment, decided to shove it into the bag too. If he never came back, at least he'd have something. He turned to the other side of the infirmary and had one last chat with Stanley.

"Are you doing okay?"

"Fine. Andy loves to use that blowtorch, so I'll never have to worry about roaches. It's you I'm worried about. I don't care what your dad did, you were always a great kid. Good luck, and I hope you can come back one day."

"Thanks Stanley." Running out of the room and down the corridor, he dispatched a few more roaches in his way, but he arrived too late to save Mrs. Taylor. She had so many bite marks on her that the roaches had killed her at least ten minutes ago, if not more. Once again his anger tried to take over his mind, but he pushed it away and dispatched the roaches quickly with his baton. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't revenge. "She might already be dead, but killing these roaches might save someone else later." Realizing that the only person he was fooling was himself, he quickly continued his escape and took the stairs to the atrium.

"Hey it's me Tom Holden. Let me through!"

The voice Michael heard was followed by several gunshots. Only a second later, a voice that was definitely his wife Mary yelled "No!" and more shots followed. Reaching the top of the stairs, he saw Mary's body lying at the hallway that led toward the vault entrance. The officers were shooting people who weren't even remotely involved; this was pure chaos.

"Sorry boys, but no one gets away with this when the sheriff's around." Drawing one of his pipebombs, he carefully approached the wall next to the doorway. Deciding to give peace one last chance, he leaned around the corner and said "Hey! I had nothing to do with my dad's escape. I'm not going to hurt anyone."

The only response he got from the two officers was several rounds of 10mm ammo whizzing past him. Ducking back and retrieving his lighter, he yelled "I change my mind! I am going to hurt someone!" He lit the fuse, waited a few seconds for it to burn halfway down, and then threw it around the corner. One of the officers had just enough time to yell "OH SHIT!" before it went off.

Carefully turning around the corner, he found that his never before tested toy worked like a charm. There were scorch marks all over the walls, a small crater in the concrete floor, and the officers had been turned into several dozen meaty chunks wrapped in pieces of vault suits. Looking them over, he realized that he wouldn't be able to salvage much. Their weapons were still in one piece, but both had literally melted. One of the officers had been facing toward the blast when it went off, so his spare magazines on the back of his belt had been shielded from the blast. Grabbing the extra ammunition, he made his way over to the door panel. The explosion had destroyed the controls, there was no way he'd be using this route to get out of the vault. He'd just have to try to make it to the overseer's office alive.

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One thing Michael didn't know was that Thomas had decided that interrogating Amata was the next best choice to actually finding him. With officer Mack helping him drag Amata to the security office, he proceeded to unlock the security cell. "Alphonse Almodovar, you are hereby pardoned for the crime of attempted murder. In exchange for this pardon, you will help us question your daughter for the location of Michael."

Alphonse simply smiled and got off his bunk. "I knew only one person could cause this much trouble. No one listened to me."

"Now is not the time Alphonse." Turning toward Amata, Thomas harshly yelled "Tell me where Michael is!"

"I don't know, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you! He didn't do anything! He said he had no idea his dad was leaving, and I believe him! He stayed in our quarters after the alarm went off, waiting for instructions from you!"

"Very well." Thomas turned to Mack and nodded. He withdrew his baton and smiled. "You know Amata, you wouldn't be in this mess if you'd just been a good girl and hooked up with me instead of that douchebag."

"You've got nothing on Michael. I've seen him take you down a half-dozen times on the gym's wrestling mat. Why would I want to have anything to do with you when I've found someone who's tougher, cuter, and obviously smarter than you?"

Mack's expression went from smile to anger in a half second. "That tiny dicked loser is a fucking moron, and I'm going to kill him today. Get used to the idea."

She laughed in his face, and it wasn't a forced laugh. Everything Mack had just said was hilarious to her. "Tiny dick? He's got eight inches on him, which is probably more than double yours. Just in case you want to know, we fuck twice a day and he's always got me coming hard. What have you ever fucked besides your hand?"

Amata had let Michael's smart attitude rub off on her over the past few years. She realized a half second later that it was a mistake. The enraged officer raised his baton and hit her right in the head, knocking her to the floor. Blood was pouring from her mouth.

"Dad, help me!"

"I'm sorry Amata. I love you, but I must place the vault's safety above yours."

A transmission rang out over the room's intercom. "Sir, we have a big problem!"

Thomas stepped over to the intercom. "What is it?"

"This is officer Taylor. Officers Kendall, O'Brien, and Richards are all dead! Roaches seem to have gotten Kendall, but O'Brien and Richards were killed by some kind of explosion!"

Thomas paused for a moment. "Keep me posted and keep searching for Michael." Turning to Amata, he said "Explosives? Your little boyfriend is pretty hardcore."

"You should just let me go now. He might not kill you that way."

"I have no intention of letting you go. He has killed two officers, and revenge must be taken. Perhaps killing his girlfriend is an adequate punishment?"

Amata pulled the pistol Michael had given her out of her pocket and leveled it directly at Thomas' head. "I'm not very good with these, but you're only a few feet away. Do the math."

Michael had known that she might end up in this situation, and she smiled as she thought about how proud he would be. Unfortunately, one factor she hadn't anticipated ended up being her downfall. Taking a syringe of med-x from the security office's small first aid box, Alphonse snuck up behind her and injected the entire syringe into her neck. Amata didn't have a chance, she was out before she hit the floor.

"Good work Alphonse. You may just have secured a job for yourself in someplace other than garbage burning."

"I didn't do it for that. You will not kill her, even for revenge. You will lock me back in the cell so he does not suspect my involvement. Leave her lying there and wait for Michael to show. With that much med-x in her, she won't be even slightly moving for twelve hours at least. The mere image of her dead will be enough to send him into shock, leaving him easy to capture. Even if you can't take care of him, there's no problem. If he thinks she's dead, there will no longer be a reason for him to stay in the vault. With his father the only family he has left, he'll leave of his own accord simply to find him."

Thomas stopped for a moment, unable to find a flaw in the plan. "Impressive. I now know why the people picked you for overseer so many years ago."

Alphonse walked back into the cell. "Do not hurt my daughter. No matter what. I may not be Michael's equal, but I can assure you that I will be just as tenacious as him when it comes to my revenge."

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Reaching the upper floor of the atrium, Michael ducked as he heard gunfire. Waiting for a moment, he peeked around the corner to find chief Hannon, several radroaches dead at his feet. He pressed the release catch on his weapon, letting the empty magazine fall to the floor. As he reached for another on his belt, Michael took the opportunity to step around the corner with his gun raised.

"Drop it now. I know it's unloaded, mine isn't."

Letting the weapon fall to the floor, Hannon slowly turned around with his hands in the air. "Look, did you help your dad cause this mess or not?"

Michael kept the gun trained on him. "I had no fucking clue he'd pull this shit! I knew he wanted to open the vault, but I had no idea he'd actually go this far!"

"I didn't kill Jonas. Officer Mack beat him over and over with his baton, but he wouldn't give up any information on your dad, if he even knew any. Overseer Thomas got pissed and ordered Mack to execute him, and he did. I stood there and watched. I'm the chief, I should have stopped him, but I didn't."

Michael relaxed his aim and brought one hand down, but still kept the gun trained with his other hand. "Drop all the extra clips on your belt and go downstairs. Leave the gun."

Without a word, the officer did as he was told. Following him for a short distance, Michael waited until the officer had gone through a hydraulic door. "I honestly hope I can one day come back, with my dad. I'll promise I'll make him explain himself to all of you."

"I hope so sheriff. Good luck."

With no more conversation, Michael shut the pressure door, locked it, and smashed the control panel on his side. Wouldn't hold anyone back for long, but hopefully chief Hannon had been serious. Picking up the discarded gun and clips, he slipped them in his bag and kept moving forward.

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Crouching under the office's window, the insane overseer and sadistic officer waited for their prey. Walking down the hall with both hands on his gun, he carefully approached the security office. As he came close enough to see through the office's window, Michael saw a sight that made his heart stop. Amata! He ran into the room, kneeling at her side. She had a large wound on the side of her head, there was blood coming from her mouth, and she wasn't moving at all. "NO! You bastards! What the fuck is wrong with you? God damn motherfucking........"

He didn't get a chance to finish, as officer Mack hit him straight over the back of his head with his baton. Michael's gun went flying over to the other side of the room, and the impact was enough to knock his baton off of his belt. Even with his helmet, a hit like that had him seeing stars. He rolled over, trying to focus on staying in the conscious world.

Thomas walked over to officer Mack's side. "Sorry Michael, but this is how things work. You betrayed us all. I simply took my revenge. Don't worry, that religion your father's always talking about says that you and Amata will be together again, in about ten seconds. Officer Mack, finish this." The smiling idiot's hand went down to his pistol, but before it had cleared the holster, Michael had flicked his wrist.

The V.A.T.S. module activated, and the whole world around him seemed to freeze, with the officer's gun hand appearing to not even be moving. Even with amplified reflexes, his realized that his baton had been knocked too far away, as well as his pistol. With a swift motion, he retrieved the brass knuckles Butch had given him earlier and placed them on his right hand. With only a short period of time before the safety cut out, he aimed one straight punch at Mack. His chest was protected by a vest, his head by a helmet, but there was nothing on his neck.

Three years ago that punch had shattered a man's chest bone. Now he wasn't just older and stronger, he was wearing brass knuckles. Officer Mack fell to the floor, making a strange gurgling noise. He didn't grab his throat; he seemed incapable of controlling his muscles. His body was twitching lightly, as though he was having a seizure.

A bewildered Thomas watched as Michael quickly retrieved his pistol from the floor. Words would no longer help him now. He dove for the gun that Amata had dropped earlier. Years of training had made Michael an expert marksman. Thomas had only fired a gun once, during the self-defense courses everyone took in their early education. As well, even without using his V.A.T.S., Michael was much more agile. Before the overseer could even touch the weapon, Michael had more than enough time to aim for a targeted shot in the man's lower arm.

BANG!

"Ahhh! You son of a bitch! You shot me!"

BANG!

"Ahhh, what the fuck?" Michael, who couldn't remember if Thomas was left or right handed, decided that it was best for both of the man's arms to be crippled. It would make the new things he had planned for the overseer much easier.

"Thomas Mitchell, you have been accused of the murders of Jonas Palmer and Amata Almodovar. How do you plead?"

"What? I didn't...."

"SAVE IT ASSHOLE! I know Mack did your dirty work. I already gave him his due." He pointed to the still twitching officer on the floor. "But to be fair, it is cruel and unusual punishment to just leave him lying there. One moment sir."

Michael walked over to Mack, pulled the man's helmet off, placed his gun against Mack's forehead, and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered all over his helmet and vest.

"What the...you can't do that!"

"Sir, I can do whatever I damn well please to a murderer. Like I said before, leaving a man to die slowly is cruel. I did him a favor by putting him out of his misery. Now, I guess we can continue as before. How do you plead?"

"You don't understand. She's...."

Michael pistol whipped the overseer, sending a tooth flying to the side. He placed his gun right against the man's face, the barrel of the weapon aimed directly at his right eye. "If you will not plead, this court will plead for you. You are found guilty on the charge of two counts of murder, even if you used a hit man and only paid him with his own job. For these crimes, I hereby sentence you to death." He pulled the trigger.

Gore splattered all over him again, this time so much that his visor was virtually coated. He removed his helmet, walked over to the security cell, and unlocked it. "Congratulations Alphonse. You wanted me to stay away from your daughter." He walked over to Amata's body, gently stroking her face one last time. "Without the issue of me, you're a great overseer for this vault. Do me a favor and stop the killing. It's my father who did this to everyone."

As Michael began to rummage through the security lockers for anything useful, Alphonse decided to talk civilly with Michael for the first time in his life. Trying to not let emotion cloud what he considered to be best, he said "You really did love her, didn't you?"

"Yes. I'm sorry you disapproved, but I could not control that, and neither could she."

"What will you do now?"

Michael froze for a moment, before placing two extra pistols and a large box of 10mm rounds in his backpack. "I'm going to leave. I didn't have much of a chance before, but I just executed Thomas. Even with most of the citizens as my friends, I can't get away with something like that. Without Amata, I don't have anything left here anyway. There's no reason to risk my life just to stay. I will do one thing though. I will bring back my dad to explain himself. He knew that he would cause a panic; some, if not all, of this blood is on his hands. No one escapes justice, not even my family."

Alphonse almost couldn't believe his ears. Had Michael grown this much over three years? Or was he this way before? As Michael turned toward him, Alphonse looked him in the eyes and saw nothing, no emotion whatsoever. A person who was dead inside. He nearly let it slip that Amata was just unconscious. But the last remnants of his hate for Michael prevented it. "There's a tunnel in....."

"I know. Amata told me. How do I get in?"

"You'll have to hack the terminal, but the codes for it and the office door have changed since I was put in this cell." He glanced at Thomas's body. "Only he had working codes."

"I can hack a computer much more easily with my pip-boy upgraded, and a simple office door is too weak to keep me out." Michael searched both officer Mack and Thomas briefly, finding both pistols and Mack's ammunition, but nothing useful on the overseer. Counting mentally, he realized that he had six pistols and at least three hundred rounds of ammunition, with a dozen loaded magazines. A little much, but at least he would not need to worry about weapons out in the wasteland. Quickly using a small data cable, he connected his pip-boy to the dead overseer's and copied all the information. There were no recorded passwords or anything immediately useful, but it might make good reading material later. Turning to Alphonse, he said "Take care of this vault. Don't let anyone else die."

Without so much as a goodbye, he walked out of the office and proceeded to the administrative section. Jonas was on the floor in the outside portion of the overseer's office. He had multiple wounds on him besides the gunshot, several bones were obviously broken. Considering the damage to his body, the bullet to the head had been merciful. Saying a silent prayer, he searched Jonas's pockets for anything that might help him. Amazingly, there was a holotape in his pocket that was labeled "note from dad." Placing it in his bag, he murmured to himself "A little late for words. But maybe I'll listen to it later."

Proceeding to the inner office door he found that, as expected, it was locked shut and required a passcode. His lockpick skills were horrible at best, and he decided that taking ten minutes to hack the door panel was nine minutes too many. He withdrew his second pipebomb from his backpack, as well as one of the adhesive cubes he had pocketed for this very situation. Sticking it to the top of the door and lighting the fuse, he yelled "Fire in the hole!" to no one in particular, ran out of the room, and waited five seconds.

With a deafening BOOM!, the pipebomb went off. Walking back into the room, he found things had happened exactly as expected: the top third of the door was vaporized, as well as the hydraulic mechanism inside the top of the door's threshold. The bottom two thirds had been blown ten feet into the office. Proceeding over to the few lockers in the room, he found some more 10mm ammunition and....a pack of mentats? Drugs like these were highly regulated in the vault. There was no way James or Jonas would have approved them for Thomas, he had no need for any kind of mental boost. "Well well well, looks like our overseer was an addict. Should have saved them for Mack." He pocketed the mentats, as well as some pre-war money in the desk. Though highly unlikely, it was still possible that the outside world might use this kind of currency.

Connecting his pip-boy to the terminal, he activated the specialized counting program he had made just for such a purpose. The length of the man's password was worth an audible laugh from him. Four letters long. Unbelievable. Including symbols, an eight letter password had over 7 quadrillion possible combinations, but a four letter password only had about 85 million possible combinations. Michael had engineered several programs for dealing with passwords, and it was easy for him to pick a simple brute force program. Operating at millions of guesses per second, it hacked the relatively simple password in less than a minute: king. He quickly accessed the root directory and scanned the files. The various files on vault subsystems and inventory were useless, but there was something else, something that was even more of a surprise than the short password. The vault had been opened before, about thirty years ago, and a scouting team had brought back a significant amount of information, including the location of a small wasteland city named Megaton not far from the vault.

Copying the files and activating the access command, he watched the desk rise up from the floor, revealing stairs that led to a small tunnel. No wonder the older citizens wanted no one to leave the vault. They'd already tried, and it was too dangerous for them. "But not for dad. And not for me. Bring it on."

Following the small tunnel, he found the end opened a fake wall panel in one of the siderooms next to the main entrance. Backtracking slightly, he entered one of the storerooms and gathered more supplies. Emergency rations, purified water bottles, anti-radiation chems. He considered taking one of the radiation suits, but the files had said ambient radiation was almost non-existent, only concentrated in a few areas. He selected two all-weather jumpsuits instead, folding them quickly and placing them in his bag. Taking one last look inside, he drew out his last pipebomb and placed it in his pocket, along with a second loaded pistol. Dual wielding weapons may have only been for the movies, but it was faster to pick up another weapon than to reload the first one.

As prepared as he could be for the wasteland, he proceeded to the main door and input the code from the overseer's terminal. Alarms sounded, and the large arm that moved the door slowly swung into position. He heard a voice from one of the inner doors. "He's opening the vault door! Get the overseer, we need this door open now!"

The main door nearly open, the officers finally managed to open the door between them and Michael. Drawing both of his pistols quickly, he found officers Park and Wolfe coming through with their weapons drawn. "Drop it now Michael!"

"There's no going back now. The overseer killed Amata because she wouldn't give me up. I killed him and Mack too. The only thing I have left now is to find my dad and bring him back. I promise I'll make him explain himself."

They both lowered their weapons, with Michael lowering his shortly after. Wolfe said "You were always the sheriff. Can't promise you'll ever get back in, but if the outside camera shows you holding your dad, that'll increase your odds." Park decided to speak too. "We were on patrol the whole time. We had nothing to do with Jonas or Amata. It was all that sick bastard Thomas and his lapdog Mack"

"I know. I killed both of them, I've had my revenge. Do me a favor and keep this place safe while I'm gone. It's my only home." Turning around and walking out, he hesitate briefly before stepping out onto the rock floor of the cave. He kept going forward, determined not to look back, but the screeching sound of the door forced him to turn around. Watching the door slowly close, he gave the officers a thumbs-up and walked to the other end of the cave. "The first day of the rest of my fucking life." Pulling the small wood door open, he was nearly blinded by his first look at the sun.

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Well, Michael's life went from fucking great to fucked up pretty quickly. Will he survive the harsh wasteland, or end up dead in the sand ten minutes after he leaves? Does he really plan to bring his dad back to the vault, or does Amata's faked death mean he no longer cares? And exactly how fucked up will things get when Amata wakes up and hears the facts? Tune in next time, on "Wasteland Sheriff!"


	6. The Wasteland Sucks

The next chapter in the series of the Wasteland Sheriff. Shoved out of his clean and safe home of nineteen years, facing a brutal radioactive wasteland by himself, and his girlfriend dead about ten minutes ago. Definitely not this guy's day. How far is he going to get with the limited supplies he managed to take with him? Can he even survive this harsh world after having lived such a pampered life? As always, rated M because the wasteland's a harsh place.

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Chapter 6 – The Wasteland Sucks

Bright light. Absolutely blinding. For nearly a minute, Michael was forced to slowly let his eyes adjust, having not seen the sun over so many years. He looked out over the expanse of land in front of him, and panicked when he saw where the sky met the earth on the horizon. He looked up, seeing absolutely nothing but air above him.

"It's just the sky. It's just the sky. It's......FUCK!" He couldn't take it, he bolted back inside the small door covering the cave entrance. Slamming the door shut, he retreated a few feet into the cave and began to cry.

Everything began to flood through his mind. The last day began to pound and pound on him like waves on a beach. At least a dozen people dead or injured in the vault, and the vault's only two doctors were dead, in the case of Jonas, or gone in the case of his father. He was probably sealed outside of the vault forever; even if he managed to bring James back, there was no telling if they'd let him back in. Amata was gone forever. He hadn't been able to save her, he just wasn't good enough. "I should have been in that office ten minutes ago. Instead I took my time like I was on a Sunday stroll."

His thoughts began to twist around from sadness into rage. Every single inadequacy he'd ever had, every time he had encountered a problem and lost, it had never mattered. He'd lived a king's life in the vault, nothing had ever threatened his life until today. And did he rise to the occasion? No, Amata was dead because he couldn't protect her. How many other people might still be alive if he'd been a little faster, a little quicker, a little stronger? Kendall? Mrs. Taylor? The Holdens? Maybe even Jonas.... if he hadn't just rolled over and gone back to sleep when those stupid alarms went off.

He stood up, his rage drying the tears drying from his eyes in a split second. "Not gonna happen to anyone else. If there's a next time, it'll be different." Reaching out, he grabbed the door's handle and pulled it open. He stared at the outside world for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust again before stepping out.

His second view at the sky started to set him back into another panic, but his teacher's words started to come to mind.

_Gravity is simply a property of matter. The exact why is still an unknown, even after six hundred or so years of people trying to follow up on Issac Newton's ideas. Gravitons and other hypothetical work aside, all you kids need to know in the area of why is that you don't need a ceiling to keep from falling up. Even though the odds of any of you ever leaving this vault are about zero percent, I hope that if you do leave, you won't be part of the ninety-nine percent of vault dwellers who panic when they see the sky for the first time._

He began to recite what he remembered from his physics class, breathing as if he'd just finished a marathon. "Earth's gravity. Accelerates me toward the ground. At about 32 feet every second. Can't fall up. Only down." Trying not to panic as the thought of falling into the sky flowed through him again, he looked straight up.... and jumped.

In the space of a half second, his mind began to panic, a million thoughts of death by sky racing through his head. After another half second, gravity took over and pulled the young man back to the ground. Unprepared for the impact, his feet failed to hold him up, and he landed on his rear in the dirt. For a moment he did absolutely nothing. Then he laughed, perhaps harder than he'd ever laughed before. He raised his hand up toward the sky with one finger extended and yelled "Not today you son of a bitch! Looks like the dirt gets to keep me!"

Feeling a little happy for the first time today, he got up, brushed himself off, and looked around the immediate area. The old doorway had exited about halfway up a small mountain, and to the side Michael could see a small sign that said "Scenic Overlook". Setting down his backpack and climbing onto a small rock at the top of the miniature cliff, he gazed out at his first view of the wasteland.

Dirt. Rocks. Junk. That was pretty much it. Ruins existed all around, most notably the town in front of him that his pre-war map labeled "Springvale". Cupping his hands around his eyes as if they were binoculars, he noticed what appeared to be a giant pile of rusty metal not far away. Or maybe it was a wall? "If that's the town called Megaton, I am really screwed." Little did he know how ironic that statement was going to be in about two seconds.

Before he could turn around, he felt a impact in his left shoulder. Accompanied by a distant "bang", he knew exactly what had happened to him. Five minutes outside and he was already shot. To boot, the impact was just enough to send him forward, toppling down twenty feet of rock to the ground below. Right before he impacted, one last thought flashed through his brain. "The dirt does get to keep me."

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"You miss stupid!"

"No, I just hit him not so bad! Keep him alive, maybe we take him back home. Or keep for fresh snack later!"

"Wow. You smart!"

"Yes! Let's get tiny man."

Unfortunately for the young hero, a pair of super mutants, green monstrosities about ten feet tall, had chosen to wander near the town of Megaton and ambush anyone who left. His excited conversation with the evil sky had been more than enough to lure them toward new prey. Their favorite food was non-mutated humans, but the occasional person who survived and escaped reported that they sometimes tried to capture them alive instead.

Approaching their latest target, one of the monsters armed with a sledgehammer and the other with an old hunting rifle, they were surprised to find that the badly wounded Michael was still conscious, but only barely. With his back against the side of the cliff, he injected a stimpack and a dose of med-x into his left leg, hoping that the bone was still intact. He said in a barely audible voice "Who are you, and why did you shoot me?"

"You good food! Or maybe make good captive. We decide later."

At first, he'd hoped reason would work with these guys, even though they didn't look like they used words as often as violence. But after the five second conversation, Michael realized that negotiating with hungry mutants who couldn't make it through the first grade was pointless. Preparing to use every last drop of energy left, he flicked his wrist to activate his V.A.T.S., and hoped for the best.

Years of practice with his 10mm pistol was all he had left, and he put it to good use. Knowing that he had about four shots before the safeties would kick in, he quickly aimed two shots at each mutant, with one shot in each of their wrists.

Lady luck was with him today, and all four shots landed right where he aimed, disarming the green bastards in the space of a second. Lady luck also seemed to hate him today too, as somehow none of the bullets penetrated deep enough to hit any major blood vessels. They screamed and hollered, still breathing and quite mad. The momentary distraction was just enough for Michael, he put every pound of pressure he could on his bad leg and managed to sprint nearly ten feet away before something caused him to fall. A quick look back showed that the mutants were laughing at him, still holding their bleeding arms but making no effort to catch up with him. Why?

Letting his eyes glance down at himself, he noticed a strange object protruding from the lower portion of his left leg. "Is that my bone?" he said to no one in particular. The beasts were still howling their amusement, enjoying the show before them. One decided to yell "Too bad for you puny human! Now we definitely not capture, we eat!"

The mutants stopped laughing, their limited curiosity piqued by the strange object the human had pulled from his pocket. "Sorry, but you guys aren't eating me today." Igniting his last pipebomb, he threw the device at the mutants' feet and let his face fall back into the dirt. The massive explosion rocked the area, throwing him a foot off the ground and sending him into the dream world.

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"Oww." That was the first word out of Amata's mouth. Reaching up slowly to touch the side of her head, she got up and looked around. She was in the infirmary, but there was no one in sight. Walking out the door slowly with one had on her head, she found officer Gomez in the hallway. "What's going on?"

"Amata! You're okay! I was worried when he brought you in there."

"Michael? Is he okay?"

Gomez's face quickly moved to sad. "He left the vault. Your father told him that you were dead."

"What? Why would he....I mean....What the hell is going on?"

"Michael saw you dosed up on med-x with blood coming out of your mouth. Apparently when Michael came into the security office, Thomas claimed he'd killed you to piss him off. It worked, but not the way that idiot had hoped. Michael killed him and officer Mack, quite brutally in my opinion. Michael let your dad out of jail after that and ran out of the vault."

Amata couldn't believe it. Michael was alive and out of the vault, as she'd hoped, but he thought she was dead? What would he do now? How was he feeling? "He let Alphonse out of jail? What else did I sleep through?"

"Other than your father claiming to be the one who killed Thomas and Mack, saying that he saved your life, and that he got Michael to leave, not much really. A significant portion of the vault seems to support him now as a replacement overseer."

"What? He tried to kill Michael three years ago! He got a life sentence for it! What the hell?"

Gomez looked down, not saying anything for a few seconds. "Some people seem to think that he's redeemed himself. They think that by killing the crazed overseer and ordering all the officers to stand down, he saved a lot of lives. They also seem to think that by letting Michael go, he showed that he had somehow gotten over trying to kill him. It's crazy, but these are crazy times."

"If he claimed to kill Thomas and Mack, how do you know he didn't?"

"Because it was in the security recordings. Not to mention the fact that Michael admitted it to officers Park and Wolfe before he left. A few of us know, and we're pretty pissed about it. We made several copies of the security tape before Alphonse could get to it, so at least if he tries to pull anything, we've got that to stop him."

Amata could barely believe what she was hearing. Michael gone and thinking she was dead. Overseer Thomas killed by Michael and replaced by her father. And the security officers still twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing about the whole situation.

Officer Gomez's face perked up somewhat. "Just so you know, he also told Park and Wolfe that he planned to bring his father back and explain everything to us. You know for sure that no one in this vault will keep Michael out if they see him holding James at gunpoint. You'll see him again soon; if anyone can survive out there, it's Michael."

A smile crossed her face for the first time today. He was right, Michael was the one person she knew who could survive anything. And if he brought back his father, it would have to be enough to convince the other residents to let him back in. "I'm not going to support a damn thing my father tries to do, especially if he plans on keeping the vault sealed permanently. If you got a few minutes, I'm going to need your help."

"What?"

"We've got work to do."

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Michael awoke to find himself in a dirty bed, staring at the ceiling of what he guessed was a dilapidated pre-war house. Looking down at himself, he realized that he had to still be alive, hell would be way worse and heaven would have.....well.....he pushed the thought from his mind before emotion could take control of him again. Adjusting his body, he felt the blisters where the explosion had burned through his vest and jumpsuit. Pulling his arm up to check the wound in his shoulder, he was amazed to find that it was already partially healed, if not very sore. Moving his left leg, he found that a makeshift splint had been put on him.

"You had four stimpacks on you kid, and I figured you'd want one in your bullet wound. After I set the bone back in place, I gave you the other three stims in your leg. With that much flowing through there you should be fine by now."

Doing his best not to show any panic, he slowly reached for his pistol, but the holster was empty. His pocket was also one N99 short. Turning his head to the side, he saw a woman sitting at a counter with various strange items on it. She looked young and old at the same time, having a beautiful face that seemed to have somehow weathered in only a few years. Her eyes looked tired, sad, but somehow her spirit still held onto life. She was carrying some kind of weapon in her right pocket, probably a revolver of some kind, but it was hard to tell.

"I guess I owe you for saving my life. What's my heroine's name?"

A short chuckle escaped her lips before she answered. "My name's Silver."

"Well, I'm Michael, and I'm very happy to meet you."

"Course you are. You know you're damn lucky you fell down so close to my place; I don't wander much anymore. Not to mention that two super mutants would be more than enough to take down a Talon merc, let alone someone like you."

"Super mutant? Talon merc? What are those?"

She rolled her eyes and turned around. Was this kid even worth her time? "You must've been hit harder on the head that I thought. Where'd you come from?"

He sat up and slowly removed the splint from his leg, finding it stiff but just as capable as before he'd fallen down that cliff. "I came from Vault 101."

She gasped. Being in a vault, at least one that worked, was rumored to be paradise compared to living in the wasteland. Robots waiting on you hand and foot, working telescreens with a library of pre-war videos and books, and the best medical technology from before the war. Even if all the rumors were untrue, having clean food, clean water, and a four yard thick steel blast door between you and the monsters outside were definite facts about the structures. People had been trying to get into the place since the bombs fell. That anyone would actually want to leave such a place was unimaginable.

"The vault just outside of here? The one in the cave? You actually left?"

"Wasn't my choice. I'd be dead if I didn't."

"Damn. Supposed to be heaven inside those things when they actually work. What the hell did you do wrong?"

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, silently staring at the floor for a few seconds before responding to the question. "First I pissed off the overseer. Then my dad up and decides to leave the vault without telling anyone, even though the rules say the door stays sealed. My adopted brother, who supposedly assisted my father in escaping, gets executed on the spot by security. They came after me next just because it was my dad; I had no fucking clue he was going to leave. On the way out, the woman I loved got killed protecting me."

Silver was quiet for a minute. "Shit. I thought my life sucked. No home, no family, no girl, and no caps. Sorry to hear it, honestly."

"Thanks, but could you explain a few things to me? Like what are caps?"

Silver spent nearly half an hour filling him in on everything a wasteland resident would consider basic knowledge. Caps as money and the standard barter system commonly used. The animals and mutants that inhabited the wastes. The various factions that ran what was left of the area. She ended her lecture with some notes about a couple of the major towns and locations she knew about.

"Megaton may be the nearest place you'll find some kind of civilization, but I don't really know much about current events. I haven't been inside the walls in a long while, I mostly just bother the traveling caravans for supplies."

"Why? What's wrong with the place?"

"You could say that the place is my vault. I was just trying to set my life straight, and someone wouldn't let me. I made an enemy out of the wrong guy, and now this shack is the best I've got."

"Sorry to hear it. I told you my story, mind if I hear yours?"

She looked at him for a second before responding. "It's a hell of a lot longer, and it ain't pretty on the ears."

"I don't really have anything to get to. Besides, I'd like to hear it."

"Two words. Colin Moriarty. That son of a bitch got to me when I had no caps, nothing, begging on the street. He made me into his own personal whore, renting me out to the town. No matter what I said or did, he wouldn't let me go. If I didn't do as he said, he'd just wait until no one else was around, and then he'd beat me until I promised I would do better tomorrow. I tried leaving a couple of times, but I never went further than the city gate. No supplies or money meant that I wasn't going to get anywhere outside of Megaton, and there was no place I could go inside the town."

"He became the richest man in town because he had a whore to go with his bar People came for me and they usually ended up drinking along the way, it was a win-win for that bastard. I was the one fucking every man and even a few of the women in town. It was my money, but he never let me touch any of it, all he gave me was food, water, and a room to get fucked in. So I broke into his stash while he was sleeping and took the goddamn fortune I'd earned for him. Bought a few basic things with the money before I ran out the front gate and found this shack. Didn't plan on staying here for long though."

"I thought I could wait for everything to die down, then go back and use all those caps to start up a new life. Believe it or not, I actually thought about opening up another bar in town. After about a week, I was running low on supplies. I waited for a merchant to leave Megaton so I could do some trading and get some news. He told me that I'm a wanted woman in Megaton. I'm stuck out here for the rest of my life because he branded me a thief."

"Uh.... fuck.... I'm sorry to hear that. Something like that would never happen in the vault. It's not perfect, but it's safe. I seriously wish I could get you in there."

"It's the thought that counts. Thanks anyway. Well, let me help you with a few final facts. Trust is something that only morons have out here. Watch your back all the time, even when you're sleeping in your own room. And in case you haven't already found out, the wasteland sucks kid, get used to it."

"I can deal with all of that, I guess. But on the trust thing, you'll excuse me for trusting you after you saved my life. Tell you what, I know you've got my pistols right now. Keep 'em, you deserve that much for keeping me alive and under your roof."

She snorted. "You won't survive ten seconds outside without weapons."

He wanted to tell her that he had packed four more pistols in his bag on the cliff, but a moment's thought told him that someone, or something in the case of mutants, had likely scavenged all his supplies by now. "Okay, I'll split it with you. One for each of us, okay? Those 10mm rounds probably penetrate way better than that small revolver you're hiding."

Her eyes lit up in surprise. After a moment, she replied "Here I am thinking you're just another pampered nobody who got kicked out of a vault, but you survive two super mutants and you can see concealed weapons? You have either got some serious luck or major talent." She walked forward and reached under the bed, withdrawing the two N99s.

"You kept my own guns a foot underneath me?"

"Well where the hell else?"

He couldn't think of a response, so he took one of the weapons, checked it, and put it in his holster. She looked at the other one for a moment before she decided to tell him how generous, and dumb, he was. "Considering that I could get a hundred caps out of a pistol in this condition, I'd say dragging you in here, using your own meds on you, and letting you lie on my bed for a couple hours was definitely a great idea. I'll take it, but you should know this really is too much of a reward. With that attitude, I doubt you'll survive long out there." She set the weapon on the counter next to the various drugs she possessed.

"You saved my life when you could have just stripped me and left me to die. I'm pissed at myself for being unable to help you more. If it's okay, I have another question for you. Over by your new gun, what the hell are those?"

Glancing over at the counter, she simply said "What, you guys didn't have drugs in the vault?"

"Well, yeah, but not those things. You've got buffout, mentats, even some of that hardcore psycho shit I saw in the database, but I've never seen those." as he pointed to what appeared to be a small inhaler device attached to a clear canister filled with pink liquid.

"It's jet. Cheaper than most drugs, and goes in great. Pretty safe too. Haven't OD'd on it yet, I once took two whole ones by myself, and I was fine. Well, except for the fact that I passed out for a day."

"Nice. Sounds like a great way to forget stuff for a while."

She picked up one of the cartridges, looking at it for a moment. "Yeah, it is." She placed the end in her mouth, pressed the canister against the inhaler, and took a deep hit. She held it for a moment, then released the strange fumes out of her nose. She looked at him and held out the cartridge. "How's this for a little celebration? To new friends."

Hesitating for a second, he reached over and took it. Looking carefully at the inhaler, one last thought went through his head before he took his first hit. "What the fuck. Not like I have anything to lose."

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Some time later, with a headache the size of the vault door, he woke up in the same bed he had been in. Rolling over, he made contact with a still sleeping Silver, who was just as naked as he was. "What the fuck?" He rolled over, sitting up on the edge of the bed. "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"Nothing. That was amazing." He turned around to find Silver beginning to sit up. "I can't remember a lot of it, but what I can remember was unbelievable. You seriously fuck like an animal."

"Silver, didn't you hear me? I walked out of that vault alive, but the woman I loved didn't! She was everything to me! She died yesterday! This is fucking unbelievable!" To her amazement, he began to break down in front of her, crying a literal river of tears onto the floor. He seemed to be barely breathing, his lungs deeply drawing air every few seconds between his sobs.

"Ohh....." She suddenly realized why he had been so good to her. The drugs, the disbelief over his girl's death.... he thought he had been making love to her. She crawled over to him and put her arms around him, trying her best to act like a friend instead of a lover. "Look, we were both high, we had some fun, that's all. I haven't had sex for at least a year, and even retired whores get horny. You were going at it pretty well, you must've thought I was her. We jetted and screwed, neither of us knew what was really going on, it doesn't mean anything."

Her words comforted him minimally. His sobs died somewhat as he tried to speak. "I.... just.... it's not....."

"What was her name?"

He turned toward her. The look on Silver's face was strange, it seemed worried but caring at the same time. "Amata."

"I'm sorry. I didn't think about it before we...."

"Don't. We were high, like you said. We just had a good time." His eyes began to dry as he spoke the words. Maybe he was deceiving himself, but repeating the words over and over in his head seemed to help.

She withdrew her arms and laid back, smiling. "I wasn't lying. She.... Amata was lucky."

"Thanks. Especially for that jet stuff, I still feel pretty good. I have to try some more of that another time. Look, I want to make sure that the two of us are still friends, just not lovers."

"Good enough for me. I know I said not to trust anyone, but if you ever need a place to stay, you'd be my guest. Whether or not you feel like fucking me silly, the offer's still open."

He did his best to smile. "I just might take you up on that. The first part I mean." Glancing at his pip-boy, he realized that it was almost ten in the morning. "I sort of already told you, but the only family I have left is my father. He left the vault without permission in the middle of the night; that's what caused the panic that killed so many people. Including Amata. I've got to leave, I only have one thing left to do in my life, and that's to find him."

"To make him explain, or to take revenge?"

He stopped. "I don't know yet. I don't think I could ever kill him, even if he told me he didn't care about all the people who died. At the very least, I have to bring him back to the vault first. He isn't going to explain it to just me."

She looked down for a moment, hesitating before she spoke. "Megaton is the closest town. Anyone fresh out of that vault would have stopped there first. You should check around, but like I said before, be careful of Colin. He's a fucking bastard who only cares about two things: caps and himself."

"All right. I promise, if there's a way to clear your name in town, I'll do it. Thanks, for everything."

"Well, thanks for the orgasms and the company. You are literally the first nice person I've met in years, and the only guy I've ever met who wasn't a sexhound bastard. I tell you, if you actually like sex, you'll probably find quite a few girls willing to jump in with you in this wasteland."

"Thanks, I guess. Don't get me wrong Silver, sex is great. And with how tired I am, it must have been really great last night. But right now I'm amazed that last night happened even with the drugs. It's not going to be something I'll ever be able to do sober." He gave her one last smile as he turned around and headed out into the desert again.

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Walking back up to the cliff where he had dropped his backpack, he was surprised to find that no one, mutant or human, had touched his stuff. It might have had something to do with the charred and mutilated super mutant corpses at the bottom of the cliff, but he couldn't be sure. He stripped off his burned security vest and tattered jumpsuit, and reached in his pack for another. Accidentally pulling out the tunnel snake jacket first, he briefly considered wearing it before putting it back in his bag. Pulling on the clothes, he briefly stopped as he saw the 'Vault 101' label on the side. Was it wise to be walking around in something so obvious? Would it make him a target for the people Silver had said wanted to get into the vault? Shrugging, he realized that he could either wear it or walk around naked, which would probably make a bad impression on the people in Megaton.

Briefly checking his supplies, he found that he only had a few days worth of water and packaged food, but it would probably be simple enough to trade for more in Megaton. As for weapons, the five 10mm N99 pistols plus over three hundred rounds of ammunition would do for a while, assuming he wasn't ambushed by giant mutants again. He pulled his extra belt out of the bag and detached the holster from it, then attached it to the belt he was wearing. Looking down, he admired himself with two pistols at his waist, just like his favorite movies. He loaded the other pistols, placing one in the inside pocket of his jumpsuit and the other two in his front pockets. If the entire town of Megaton didn't like him, at least he now had a chance.

His pre-war money amounted to just over six hundred dollars, but Silver had told him that the old bills wouldn't be worth much more than a handful of caps. The fact that he had a dozen stimpacks and ten syringes of fresh med-x might be useful for trade, but the few packages of radaway and single bottle of rad-x wouldn't last him for very long, so he resolved to keep them no matter what. He had no extra explosives left, and the only other thing of value he had was the pack of mentats he'd taken from the overseer's office. The bobblehead from his dad's office was nice, but it probably wasn't worth much. "Someone had better be hiring in town."

After ten minutes of walking, Michael found himself through the ruins of Springvale and near the rusty gates of Megaton. There was a man in rough clothes sitting not far from the gate, who appeared to be unarmed, and a Protectron class robot standing directly in front of it. The model appeared to be equipped with a weak laser weapon and the standard armor plating, which could probably be penetrated by his pistol, to say nothing of the weapons those mutants had been carrying. "Is this their idea of security?" His query was quickly answered by a loud shout. "Halt! What's your business?"

He looked up to find a sniper on top of the wall yelling at him. The man had some kind of rifle leveled at him, which would obviously be much more accurate than a pistol at this range. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "I'm just a guy who needs a place to trade and get some information. Maybe find some work or catch some sleep tonight."

With no response, the man brought his rifle back up. A few seconds later, the gate to the city opened with a rusty screeching noise, the mechanism powered by what appeared to be a salvaged jet engine. Approaching the man sitting near the gate, he asked "Do you know anything about the area around here?"

The man turned his head toward Michael. He face seemed as though it had sunken into his skull, and when he spoke Michael could notice a few missing teeth. Even with his limited medical training, the man was obviously malnourished and dehydrated, with a distinct possibility of radiation poisoning. The man's voice was cracked and dry, sounding as if he was only a few steps from death. "Please, do you have any water? I'm so thirsty...."

Michael hesitated for a moment. The water in his pack would not last long to begin with, and in this climate the water in the city was probably expensive. It probably wasn't nearly as pure anyway in comparison to the bottles he had. Could he really afford to give this man some of his purified water? Letting the image of karma once more flow through his mind, he unslung his pack and said "You're thirsty, and I'm thirsty. Tell you what, I've got a bottle I'll split with you, okay?"

The man's eyes lit up as though they were miniature suns. When Michael handed him the container, he carefully undid the cap and slowly sipped from it, afraid to waste even a drop. He handed it to Michael, who took a brief drink before passing the bottle back.

"You've saved my life. I don't think I'll ever be able to repay you."

"I'll settle for some information. To start, isn't there water in this town?"

He nodded, a frown on his face. "Yes, and it's even partially purified, but they only give it to residents. The extra they sell for a high price, and even then it's bought quickly."

"Sorry to hear it. Can you tell me anything about the town that could be useful?"

The man thought for a moment before redirecting his attention to Michael. "There is one thing. I heard a while ago that someone died, and that they left their house to the sheriff. Also, the city has too many people wanting to live inside; it's a little cramped, with a lot of people living in a common house. You can expect a lot of people to try to get the place from the sheriff, but they won't. A home in Megaton is worth at least a thousand caps, even to a kind man like Lucas."

"Lucas? He's the sheriff?"

"Lucas Simms. Good guy, gave me water a few times even when he wasn't supposed to. If you need help, ask him. Don't expect much though, the position of sheriff in this town is almost useless, especially since no one in town seems to be willing to back him up. He can't even keep Moriarty from enslaving Gob or forcing Nova to whore herself out. Let me tell you, stay away from Moriarty. If Lucas is the good in town, he's the evil."

"Damn", he thought to himself. "Silver wasn't a one time deal, this asshole actually found a replacement for her. And he has a slave too? With a guy like this, I am definitely going to have to watch my back in this town." The thought of Silver brought back what little he could remember of last night, and the memory of jet coursing through his veins hit him like a bullet. "Does anyone in this town sell something called jet?"

The man's expression turned sour for the first time since the two had met. "You should be careful. That stuff is very addictive, and it'll eventually kill you. There aren't any dealers in town, if that's what you're asking."

"Okay. One more thing. Have you seen a man named James, probably wearing a vault suit like me? I'm trying to find him, and I know he had to have stopped here in the past few days."

"Sorry. Don't really remember anyone in particular. At least a few people end up entering and leaving Megaton every day. You should check the bars in town; if he stopped, he probably got a drink or something to eat."

"Thanks. Best of luck to you." He slung his pack back over his shoulder and headed for the town gates, stopping briefly to speak with the Protectron robot. He saw one of the plates had a name etched on it. Deputy Weld. "Deputy, are you programmed for dialog?"

"Welcome to Megaton. The bomb is perfectly safe, we promise."

"Bomb? What the fuck? What bomb?"

"Need some grub? Try the Brass Lantern."

"I don't need food right now. What do you mean about a bomb?"

"Thirsty partner? Try Moriarty's. Coolest drinks in the the wasteland."

"Good God, someone really needs to do some maintenance on you." Michael walked toward the city gates as the robot addressed him one last time. "Have yourself a nice visit partner."

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This one is a little bit shorter than my others because I had a lot to write for his first days in Megaton. Including it with this would be way too long. Anyway, feel free to review or send me ideas. I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to play out this character in the days to come, so a few thoughts could help me combat any writer's block.

Was he serious before about being pissed off at James? If they ever meet, what will he really do? How will a destiny filled guy like him affect Megaton? Is the craving for jet he's starting to feel going to mess him up? And how will things go in the vault now that he's gone? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!


	7. A Few Friendly Faces

Our lone wanderer's first day in the wasteland was unusual at best. Super mutants, drugs, retired whores. But he's finally managed to make it to a small city called Megaton. Will he get dragged down by the seedy underbelly of the city, or will he rise up to become a respected member of the community? Will he even choose to make this town his home, or just move on through the desert? Rated M because the wasteland is seriously not a kid friendly place.

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Chapter 7 – A Few Friendly Faces

Letting the rusty gates close behind him, his first look at the city of Megaton surprised him. The walls had basically been a collection of rusty scrap, but he had expected the inside to be better. It had exactly the same look, with all the buildings appearing to be slapped together pieces of metal and junk. Pieces of what appeared to be an old jet aircraft made up parts of the town, with one building balancing the entire tail section on top of itself like some kind of spare room. The entire area was sunken, with the town's walls surrounding what appeared to be a large crater with houses and platforms built into its sides. With the ramps leading between the various buildings and establishments along the sides of the enormous depression, the town looked as though someone had turned a skyscraper inside out and shoved it into the ground.

A lone man with an assault rifle on his back and a western-style hat on his head approached him. "Well well, another newcomer. You've got to be from that vault, that jumpsuit says it all. Name's Lucas Simms. I'm the town sheriff, or mayor when he's needed."

"Pleasure to meet you. I'm Michael. Good to see an officer of the law still keeping the peace after the apocalypse."

"Friendly AND well-mannered? You'll be welcome in this town, provided you keep your weapons holstered and your hands to yourself."

"Message received. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"Sure. What do you need to know?"

"Well, that half-functional robot out front said something about a bomb, and this crater looks like a small nuke went off."

"Sort of. Two hundred years ago someone dropped a large nuclear bomb right here. It didn't go off, but it hit the ground hard enough to make this crater. Right now it's still sitting in the center of town." Lucas turned around and made a gesture toward the bottom of the crater.

Looking past the man, Michael's heart nearly jumped out of his throat. How had he not seen it when he walked through the gates? Even with the rust and antique design, it was obviously a nuclear weapon. It looked old, but it was likely still capable of detonation.

"What? You guys live next to an atomic bomb? Even if the detonation mechanism is completely dead, which is unlikely, you're all definitely getting low level radiation poisoning from its core. Not enough to be dangerous short term, but you guys live around it? That's giving you serious exposure over time."

"Maybe. But the Children of Atom, a local religious group here in town, worship the bomb. Even with all the manpower in town, physically getting rid of it isn't an option. And no one here has the demolition expertise to make it safe."

"Well, if I'm going to stay here for long, I should take a crack at it for you. Didn't work with anything nuclear in the vault, but explosives are one of my favorite things."

The man's eyes lit up. Obviously he wanted a solution to this problem bad. "Well, nice of you to offer. Tell you what, I've got a hundred caps with your name on them if you succeed. Be careful though, or everyone for miles around will be pissed at the both of us."

Michael nearly tried to press him for more caps, but he remembered what the man outside had said. If Moriarty was the evil in this town and Lucas was the good, he'd need all the help he could get from this sheriff. "On to other things, has there been anyone else new in this town in the last few days? I'm trying to catch up with my dad. His name is James, and he came out of the vault a little while before me."

"Well......there was a stranger-than-usual guy who came through a while back. White, rough beard, wore a vault suit like yours. Your dad, eh? Guess I can sort of see the resemblance. He's long gone, but he mostly asked a lot of questions about what was going on in the wasteland. I know he spent a lot of time at Moriarty's, but if you go there, watch yourself. He's not your friend, no matter what he says."

"All right. Already met someone outside who warned me. Got a few more questions if you don't mind."

After a few minutes, Lucas managed to educate Michael on the various people in town, doc Church's clinic, Craterside Supplies run by Moira, the restaurant/bar named The Brass Lantern, and Moriarty's Saloon. Thanking him for his time, he walked down the hill and got his first look at the bomb.

"Jesus, how can anyone live next to that?" he said to no one in particular. Except for an old man talking nonsense nearby, no one else seemed to even notice the weapon. Though it appeared to be a model designed to be dropped by a bomber aircraft, it was unlikely at best that a Chinese plane had made it this far into American territory during the war. As well, the massive crater meant the bomb hadn't simply been dropped, it had to have been traveling at least two or three miles per second from the upper stage of a ballistic missile. "Those Chinese bastards really were crazy."

Letting his musings go, he walked up to the bomb and analyzed it, measuring the ambient radiation with his pip-boy. He was only getting a few rads per second, but he would be getting at least five times that once he opened it up. He'd need tools as well, this was not going to be an easy job.

Turning around, he was confronted by the old man as he attempted to walk away. "What interest do you have in the altar of Atom?"

"Nothing really. If I'm going to stay here for long, I thought taking a look at what might kill me would be a good idea."

"Kill you? Atom is here, dwelling within this temple, and he seeks to......" Michael stopped listening right about there. He'd heard of all kinds of religions in the vault, and this was definitely not one he was interested in.

"Thank you, but I have a lot of business to attend to. I assume that's your church over there? I'll stop in sometime so you can tell me more, okay?"

The crazed preacher's eyes lit up as he realized that this wastelander was the first in years who seemed to be even slightly interested in his dogma. "I understand. But for your soul's sake, do not wait long. For Atom will one day...."

"Yes yes, thank you." Seeing a sign for the town's clinic nearby, he decided to make it his first target. His extra medical supplies would probably fetch a good price here, and perhaps James had decided conversing with a fellow doctor about the wasteland was a good idea.

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Entering the small building, he found a clinic that was not quite up to the vault's medical standards. Saying the inside was dirty would be a compliment, but the only bed in the room was at least somewhat clean. The idea that an actual hospital bed was a good sign was quickly smashed as he noticed several rusty surgical implements on a table next to the bed. An IV stand and a few scattered medical supplies completed the small room.

"Can I help you?" Michael took in the situation for a moment. The man's expression radiated authority, just like Amata's father. Trying his best not to show the sudden pang of sadness at her memory, he realized that negotiating with this man would be difficult at best.

"Are you Doctor Church?"

"Just Doc Church. You don't look wounded, you don't have that twitchy junkie attitude, so is it radiation poisoning?"

The jet he'd taken before came up fresh in his mind. If this guy knew about addicts, maybe he would have a chance to get more jet after all. "It's actually trade and questions, if you don't mind."

"Don't have anything else to do, shoot."

"First, how do you know what a junkie acts like? Does someone sell the strong stuff around here? "

The doctor's expression became somewhat cross. "Doctor-patient confidentiality. You understand."

"I'm good with the psychological side of medicine. Let me help you and this guy out."

"Fine. I guess you can't make anything worse. Try to get Leo Stahl off his drug habit, it'll be good for him and his family both. They don't even know about it yet, at least get him to tell them."

Trying to avoid thinking about how nice it would be to just get some more of that jet stuff from the guy instead, he continued. "Has anyone new stopped in to talk with you lately? I'm looking for a man named James, and I'm sure he came through Megaton a few days ago."

"Nope. Don't know why he would come my way if he wasn't hurt."

"Okay, one last thing. How many caps for these?" He pulled five each of med-x and stimpacks out of his bag."

"Wow. These look fresh off a chemical synthesizer."

"They are. Check the suit, I'm a day out of Vault 101."

"Then they'll be much more effective than the hand processed or preserved ones I usually have to deal with. How's a hundred caps?"

Michael thought about it for a moment. He may not have been a world class trader, but the doctor's eyes couldn't hide that cheater look. "No deal. They're easily worth more than fifteen caps each, I'm giving you a discount at 150 caps."

With a cross look on his face, the doctor produced the caps and said "Fine. You're a real tightwad, you know?"

"Oh come on. You and I both know those are worth more. You shouldn't try to take advantage of a kid like me. See you around."

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As he walked out of the clinic, his stomach began to growl, and he realized that he had eaten nothing since leaving the vault. Fortunately for him, one of the establishments previously mentioned by Lucas was just across from the exit to the office. A sign that said "The Brass Lantern" was attached to the wall of the building in front of him, and an outside counter with a woman standing behind it screamed silently to his appetite. Approaching the young woman outside the restaurant, he asked "What have you got to eat, and have you seen anyone new in town lately?"

"Well, nice to meet you too."

Pretending to smack himself in the forehead, he responded "Ah, where are my manners? The name's Michael. Sorry, been a long day."

"Jenny Stahl. You said you were hungry?"

"That's why I'm here. Well, that and I'm looking for an older man named James. I'm positive that he passed through a few days ago, and I need to find out where he went."

"If I don't know anything, are you still going to be hungry?"

"Of course. What do you have?"

Eventually settling on a lukewarm beer and what she called a brahmin steak, he handed over ten caps and began to munch on the feast before him. Pausing briefly, he asked "So no go on any new guys? Even one who was in a vault suit?"

"Sorry. I don't get around too much, I manage this place from morning to sunset. My brothers might have seen him."

"Well, could you direct me to your brothers?"

She smiled. "Now you're acting too polite. Someone might shoot you for that. Leo and Andy are inside." Finishing his meal, he tipped an invisible hat toward the barmaid as he proceeded inside the restaurant. The move elicited a small giggle from Jenny. As he walked through the door, her light response hit him like a freight train. "_Amata is dead, and in two days I've slept with a random woman and started hitting on another. I should be beaten with a sledgehammer._"

Doing his best to steady himself, he walked to the counter and proceeded to ask the same questions he had been uttering all day. The man, who turned out to be Andy, told him the same story as Jenny, but said that his brother was always running around town, and that he was upstairs. Heading to the second floor, he immediately realized that this had to be the man the doctor had told him about before. Leo was twitching every now and again, and the bloodshot veins in his eyes were fairly obvious, at least to him. Were his siblings blind or what? Letting an evil sense of humor get the better of him, he decided to say "You don't look so good. Are you feeling okay?"

A quick look of anger spread across Leo's face. "I'm fine, who the hell are you and why should I care?"

"Sorry. I'm looking for a man who came through town a few days back, and your siblings said you get out more than them. He was in a vault suit like me, did you see him?"

"No. Now get the fuck out."

"I've got to hand it to you, that attitude is the mark of a real winner. Although as far as I know, most winners don't do drugs."

Leo didn't just look shocked, he nearly seemed to double over at the sound of the sentence. "What the hell..... how...."

"You see him or not?"

"No man, I swear! Please, don't tell my brother or sister!"

Michael felt himself being tugged in two different directions. On the one hand, this guy might be the only way to get another taste of that jet drug Silver had shared with him. But if he blackmailed the man for free drugs, he'd never be able to help Leo get off his habit. The scared look in Leo's eyes was too much for him, and he actually made the right choice.

"I won't tell them, because you're going to. I've seen people addicted to sedatives and antidepressants back in the vault, and I'm willing to bet you're doing even worse on jet or psycho. If you care about your family, you'll stop stealing caps from them and let them help you get clean." Michael inwardly comforted himself by saying over and over that he was not a hypocrite. He wasn't hooked on jet, he'd only tried it once. He just wanted to try it again.

Leo's facial expression changed rapidly, from sad to angry and all the way in between. After a few seconds, something happened that Michael did not expect. Leo practically fell into hugging him and started crying. "Oh god, you're right. I can't believe it, I must've stolen a hundred caps last time the guy came through. I need to stop this."

Doing his best to suppress the fact that he was uncomfortable with the situation, he patted Leo slowly on the back and carefully twisted around the urge to ask Leo where he got all his drugs. "Who's the guy selling these things to you? You've gotta avoid him."

"It's one of the merchants that comes around every month or so. Called Doc Hoff. Ain't no law against it, so it's not like he's in trouble."

_"A caravan merchant? Simple enough. But a whole damn month?"_ He thought about the situation for a second before carefully extracting himself from Leo's bear hug. "Go tell your family right now. Maybe get some help from doc Church. And make sure to get rid of any of the chems you have left."

"Fuck that. Without you I'd be a worthless addict for the rest of my life. Take 'em and sell 'em to Moira, or the doc, or maybe one of the merchants coming through all the time. It's the best I can do for a reward." Leo handed him a small key. "One of the desk drawers in the back of the town's water processing plant is locked. Check inside for my stash."

Michael simply smiled. He was absolutely itching to try more jet, but it also felt good to think about how he was helping Leo. A single thought coursed through his head "_I can't believe it. I'm Mr. Goody and I get the drugs. God loves me today._"

He thought for a moment before realizing that Leo could be making all this up, just trying to string him along so he'd go away. There was only one way to be sure the man was serious.

"You want me to stick around while you tell them?"

His eyes lit up. "You'd do that?"

"Of course. Way I see it, I'm not done helping you until you're ready for me to go."

"Alright. No time like now." Letting off a big sigh, the newly reformed man walked down the stairs with his savior in tow. "Andy, come outside. I need to tell you and Jen something."

The three headed outside, and Michael waited off to the side as he began his confession. Though he stuttered a little at first, he finally managed to tell them everything, starting to cry again. The two were amazingly positive about the situation, surprising even an optimist like Michael. A group hug and some encouraging words flowed through the family. Even as he tried to stay detached from the situation, he had to admit that a good feeling flowed through him as he watched the events he had set in motion. Leo gave him one more smile before he went back inside the restaurant, leaving his stunned siblings outside.

Andy turned to Michael. "I don't know how you found out about his problem, but you actually helped him instead of screwing around or blackmailing him. I honestly don't know what to say."

"Say nothing, it was my pleasure. Just keep running an honest bar and be sure to watch your brother. Not to be a pessimist, but a relapse is possible."

"Sure. Thanks again, you're always welcome here." After he walked inside, Jenny decided to speak with him too. "Now that my brothers are gone, I think you should know something. If you're ever looking for a drinking buddy, you can look me up after dusk. A good guy like you is hard to find around here."

Again feeling an imaginary sledgehammer hit him in the head, he tried his best to come up with a response in under ten seconds. What did she mean? Was she hitting on him? Could he honestly have a drink with her and keep things at the friend level? "I'll definitely take you up on that sometime. For now, I gotta keep looking for my dad. Keep on keeping on, okay?"

She let out another laugh at his unusual response. For some reason, Michael couldn't help but identify her laugh with that of Amata's. Walking away with the best smile he could, a frown quickly crossed his face when he reached a safe distance. "_Every single female on earth is reminding me of Amata. I've cheated on her one day after she died. I can't take this much longer. I feel like I'm gonna throw up. Why the hell can't I just shove this away?_"

Wandering around the town for a while, he let himself get lost in his thoughts. Would five minutes have really made a difference? Of course it would have, he could have saved her. He could have saved everyone. He just wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough, wasn't good enough. What if something happened in Megaton? Would he be able to make a difference for these people? Was this even really a new home for him? He looked up and noticed that his stroll had put him next to the town's general store. "_I need some serious weaponry if I'm not going to screw up again._"

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Walking into the general store, he looked around briefly and saw what he considered to be a miniature version of the wasteland. There were some decent items, but random pieces of junk were scattered about the room. Noticing a woman with her back turned in the corner, he stepped up to her. "Hi. I'm Michael. You run this place?"

She turned around, a smile on her face. She was a little dirty, with her brown hair pulled back and wearing what appeared to be an old RobCo jumpsuit. "Oh, hey! I'm Moira, and this is my store, Craterside Supply! How can I help you?"

A little too peppy for his tastes, but he did his best to ignore the woman's excessively upbeat attitude. Especially since her optimism brought him back to an always-smiling Amata. "I need some firepower, and maybe a few other things."

"Well, I'm not a gun runner, but I have a few things you might be interested in. Take a look."

She opened a wall locker to reveal her weapon selection. She had several 10mm pistols, four of them were standard N99s, like the pistols he'd brought with him out of the vault. Sitting next to them was a Colt 6520. He had studied a lot of firearms in the database, and he had been disappointed to learn that this weapon was common only on the western coast of the United States before the war. He picked up the firearm.

"You actually have one of these? I thought the N99 was the only 10mm pistol on this coast before the war."

"That they were, but a trader brought me that gun a while back. No idea where he got it, but I restored it for fun. Thought about keeping it, but it should fetch a high price."

He sighed. "I'd love to have a gun like this, but it's no better than my others."

"I know. I really wonder sometimes what the government did before the war to put two different 10mm pistols in place. You'd think they only would have one common model."

"Yeah, gotta wonder what those guys were thinking."

She also had an old Chinese pistol, but even though it was chambered for 10mm, it was definitely weaker than any other projectile weapon in the locker. Thousands of the things had been captured and shipped back to America before the war went nuclear, but not because they were effective weapons. They were a lot less damaging than other pistols. The only reason they were even used was because they were easy for China to mass produce in low-tech factories and hand out to millions of untrained conscripts. They'd mostly been memorabilia before the bombs fell, something you hung above the fireplace and said "_Some dead Chinese bastard used this in the war. Pretty cool, eh?_" He didn't understand why anyone would even try to use them, outside of a situation of last resort.

Two well maintained .32 revolvers were right next to it, but they couldn't deliver as much force as a 10mm weapon. Completing the upper shelves of the locker was an AEP7 laser pistol, which was in even worse condition than the rest of her collection of death. Even though this model was more powerful and durable than the standard civilian Wattz 1000 laser pistol, this particular example of energy weaponry had not fared well in the last two hundred years.

"Does that laser pistol even work?"

The woman let out a short laugh. "Not really. It'll fire, but the focusing crystal is nearly shot and the lens has several deep scratches. I haven't found any replacement parts yet, so if you want the beam to penetrate, your target had better be naked."

Looking at the bottom of the locker, she had two larger guns left for his appraisal. She had a hunting rifle with a rusty barrel, which he thought about for a minute before thinking that it would be next to useless without a scope. Last in her collection was a submachine gun, which quickly got his interest. Slowly hefting the weapon to a firing position, he aimed it down the iron sights at the wall before asking "An MP9, eh? This model is 10mm, right?"

"Yes. It's it okay shape, it won't jam on you.....much."

He reached in his pockets and pulled out his extra pistols. "I'll trade you two N99s for it." Though at first Moira had seemed hesitant, when she took a closer look at the pistols she changed her mind. They were in perfect condition, having never needed any kind of repairs whatsoever.

"And here I am thinking I don't need any more pistols! Disassembling one of these ought to give me enough spare parts to make all four of my old N99s perfect again! Four bad to five great, how about that!"

"Glad to hear it. Throw in every empty magazine you've got for this killer, and I'll throw in a fresh-off-the-synthesizer pack of mentats."

At first he was slightly worried that mentats might make the eccentric woman's head explode, but he knew that a repair woman/technician would love to occasionally pop one of those for difficult tasks. "Mentats! Those would be great for the next time I'm trying to mix those new chemical compounds! You've got a deal!"

Exchanging the items, Michael asked if it would be alright to borrow her workbench for a bit. After she nodded, he walked over and quickly stripped apart his new toy. Most of the weapon's interior parts were actually in good shape; but several critical elements were weathered. The worst thing about the weapon was the barrel, considering that it had somehow been bent slightly. "Wonder if it's heat warping or a giant monster sat on it. At least I can shoot around corners now."

Smiling, he set down his bag and withdrew the pistol in his inside pocket. A regular person wouldn't think that the parts were compatible, but both weapons were chambered for 10mm, and the simple parts he needed were almost exactly the same. After ten minutes of work, he had changed a perfect pistol and a nearly broken MP9 into a decent submachine gun and a pile of semi-useful parts. After loading the magazines he'd acquired, he placed the parts in one of his backpack's side pockets and attached the MP9 to the side of his bag with a quick release strap. With any luck, he'd be able to pull out the weapon in about two seconds.

Turning around, he found himself being stalked by the store's eccentric owner. "How long have you been standing there?"

"The whole time. If you're good with repairing other things, you might want to check with Walter at the town's water purifier. I hear he's looking for some assistance, and he's probably willing to pay. He's loaded with caps, he gets a lot of the sale money from the town's extra water."

His face lit up. "Many thanks! I need some serious work, I don't have much besides the clothes on my back."

"Well, speaking of clothes, I can make you a deal. I once ran across a girl fresh out of your vault about a decade ago, and in exchange for some help I armored one of her vault suits. It wasn't exactly heavy combat material, but it helped."

A decade ago? What the hell? The files on the overseer's computer said that people had left the vault, but that had been over thirty years ago. How could he have not noticed someone missing, even if he'd only been nine at the time?

"Wait a minute. You're saying someone else left my vault before?"

"Oh yeah! Maybe ten or twelve years ago. The big 101 on the back of her suit wasn't hard to miss! No idea why she left, it's supposed to be nice in those places. Say, why did you leave?"

"It's a really long story. But that suit you mentioned sounds useful. What do you need from me in exchange?"

"Well, I'm writing a book. I'm going to call it The Wasteland Survival Guide. Before I publish it I need someone to test out a few things. After all, I have to make sure my information is accurate."

"What do you want me to test?"

"To start, I've invented a few home-brewable anti radiation compounds. I need someone to become irradiated so I can test them on a living person. Don't worry, if none of them work I've got several packs of radaway."

He thought about it for a moment. He didn't have very much anti radiation medicine, knowing a few all natural treatments would be useful. Plus, he was going to get a significant dose soon if he planned on trying to dismantle an atomic bomb without a radiation suit. Pulling his extra vault suit out and two fresh stimpacks out of his bag, he said "Okay. I'll come back glowing with radiation and you can armor this thing for me. I need one last trade though. You have any toolkits or something like that? I'll give you two stimpacks."

She paused for a moment. "Hmm, I have a few old super toolkits made by Snap-Off. I needed one of the kit's cases for one of my projects, so I packaged all the tools in a rollout leather satchel. It's much more compact, probably better for a wanderer like you." She pulled the cylindrical package out of a footlocker and placed it on the counter.

He smiled as she unrolled the large package. Claw hammer, a multi tool with pliers, torque wrench, soldering iron, mini fusion welder, and several dozen other useful items. Super tool kit indeed. There was even a long flat chisel labeled 'Tungsten Carbide'. He picked up the tool, the super hard metal still glinting in the light after two hundred years. "Perfect for forcing things open, eh? Reminds me of those archeologist's tools in the old movies."

Moira laughed again, bringing the image of Amata back to the forefront of his mind. She was always laughing around him back in the vault. Michael may not have had the world's best comic routine, but he always found a way to brighten her day. It was always a good feeling to him, knowing that she was happy. Everything he'd been trying to suppress began to overwhelm him; the world around him began to fade away as a million memories flowed through his head.

A quick shove in the shoulder brought him back out. For the first time, he saw something other than an excited look on Moira's face. "Are you okay? It's like you just stopped.... living for a second there. You froze up like a broken robot."

Doing his best to hide his emotions, he gave her the simple response "Yeah." He rolled up the satchel and placed it in his bag. "I'm gonna get a quick drink and some information first, but I'll definitely be back before dusk with some radiation in me. I'm going to try my hand at disarming that bomb."

Her face went back to its normal happy look. "Oh, great! I've always wanted to try that, but I'm no good with explosives. Besides, I never really could sit still long enough to do a job like that."

Inwardly suppressing the urge to say "Yes, I doubt sitting still is one of your strong skills", he simply smiled and walked out of the store. Briefly looking around at the town, he saw a sign that said Moriarty's Saloon. "Into the lion's den...."

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A few hours in town has done wonders for the lone wanderer, but he's still got a long journey ahead of him. Now armed with a few caps in his pocket and a submachine gun at his side, will he be able to pull any information out of the town's saloon and its seedy denizens? Even if he does, how will things go if he chooses to disarm the nuke in the center of town? And what's going on back in the vault? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!


	8. The Lion's Den

After a short time in Megaton, our young hero has managed to get a few trades in his pack and some steak in his stomach. Unfortunately, no one outside of the town's bar has any knowledge of his dad. Now that he's finally made his way over to Moriarty's saloon, will he get the information he needs, or will he get screwed over by the less friendly elements of the town? Will everyone in town take kindly to his plans to disarm the nuke, or do a few people have other ideas for the weapon?

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Chapter 8 – The Lion's Den

Normally a new stranger walking into Moriarty's saloon didn't attract much attention. Megaton was one of the few large pieces of civilization left for a hundred miles, if you didn't count raider or slaver towns. New people ended up here all the time, and they invariably came to the town's only real bar. However, Michael was far from normal as wastelanders went, and he caused most of the room's heads to turn when he walked through the door.

-----------------

"_Another asshole. And fresh out of a vault?_" Jericho was about the opposite of what would be considered a good person. Formerly a raider, he was rare in that he'd settled down and managed to suppress his urges to kill, steal, rape, and pillage. Lucas Simms had even managed to find some use in the old cutthroat by enlisting his help guarding the town and repelling the occasional raider attack, but at no cheap price. "W_onder how this guy lasted long enough to get here. Probably be dead by the end of the week._"

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"_Hmm, not bad. Even if he's rough, having a decent-looking customer will be a nice break. Who knows, maybe I'll actually have an orgasm for once._" Nova, the previously mentioned replacement for Silver, was in the exact same situation as her former. No caps, no place besides Moriarty's, and no real chance at leaving. Stealing and sneaking off in the middle of the night was no longer an option; Moriarty had gotten extra careful after Silver, and a heavy lockbox with a hard lock was protecting his caps now. She comforted herself by prying as much alcohol out of Moriarty as she could, and was glad that she usually woke up the next morning without any memory of what she had been forced to do the night before. "_If he decides to rent me with a room, maybe I won't get drunk tonight. Looks like a kind enough guy anyway_."

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"_What a weird outfit. Is that one of those vault suits? I wonder if he'll mind helping me_." Lucy West, a young blonde resident with an untouched body that was rare in the wastes, was a regular at Moriarty's. Avoiding the advances of the young men in town was much easier with a prostitute only fifteen feet away. Doing odd jobs had allowed her to avoid Silver's fate, and she had even managed to buy a house in town a while back. For some time, she'd been trying to find a way to reconnect with her family, but they lived outside of Megaton, and she knew she didn't have much of a chance getting anywhere in the wastes. "_Doubt he was a mailman back in the vault, but who knows._"

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"_Great. Another new guy. Probably just as much of a bigot as the rest._" Gob was a ghoul, the slang term for a small percentage of the people in the wasteland who'd actually survived heavy radiation exposure. Lucky as they might sound, the exposure had severely disfigured them in comparison to an unexposed human. Even though they were still somehow alive, they looked dead, with skin constantly flaking off their bodies and hair falling out. Some of their kind even had a few exposed organs. Even though their transformation had somehow stopped the natural aging process, they probably would have rotted to death a long time ago if it wasn't for one other unique ability. Their transformation had somehow endowed them with the ability to heal through radiation exposure. He occasionally went down and hung out by the bomb in the center of town for awhile if he felt bad.

Ghouls were generally treated as second class citizens throughout the wasteland, and most of the town's residents had refused to even talk to him when he first arrived. It wasn't very hard for Moriarty to lure a capless Gob into becoming a bartender. By charging the ghoul exorbitant amounts of money for food and rent, he had assured himself a steady worker for many years to come. Not exactly slavery, but definitely economic slavery. "_Maybe I'll get lucky and this guy won't hit me for fun._"

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"_Good. A fresh mark. I wonder how much I'll be able to get out of this one._" Saying Moriarty was a bad person was an understatement. He knew damn well that Gob was a slave, and he had purposely set it up that way. When he saw Silver in the street years ago, the first thing that had come to mind was that having her as a whore in his bar would probably attract more potential drinkers, to say nothing of how many caps he could charge for her services. He'd been really pissed when she left, but the harsh wasteland had later given him a new opportunity in the form of Nova.

In his opinion, the young woman was somewhat more attractive than Silver, and he found it hilarious to occasionally tell her that he preferred redheads. Apparently so did the rest of the town, as she did a little more business than the former. He kept himself away from his newer whore however, as the memory of getting syphilis from Silver was a constant nightmare to him, not to mention the caps he'd shelled out to doc Church to cure them both. He remembered the speech he'd given Silver in the clinic as if it were yesterday. "_Don't mistake this for me caring, my bar would be empty if this went on much longer._"

It didn't take much for Silver to tell him that she'd most likely picked it up from a certain very disgusting traveling merchant who she'd done her best to avoid. The next time he came back into town for a drink, Moriarty personally blew off the man's head with a sawed-off twelve gauge shotgun. Lucas had come in and made a fuss, but he hadn't been able to do anything, mostly because no one in town would back him against Moriarty. Jericho had been in the bar that day, and he had actually said "_For god's sake shut up Lucas. I'm trying to drink here._"

The vault suit intrigued Moriarty. A man called James had come into town shortly before this boy in a similar suit, and he'd been asking enough questions to drive the Irish bar owner insane. Even though Moriarty had been briefly been acquainted with James many years ago, it had been difficult at best to not kick the inquisitive man out of the saloon. "_Sorta looks like James. Wonder if they're related. At least if he's fresh out of that vault he'll be a gullible disease-free moron. Either Nova will be bringing me a pile of caps tomorrow morning, or I'll pry some out of him if he wants any booze. Maybe both._"

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"_Finally. A new individual. And he looks as though he might actually be capable of performing simple tasks. I may have found someone useful._" Mr. Burke was the definition of weird. Wearing a clean pre-war business suit, he had simply strolled into town a long while back, with a fortune in caps along for the ride. Choosing to interact with almost none of the town's residents, he had simply bought a small house and spent every day in a chair in the corner of Moriarty's saloon. If it wasn't for the fact that he occasionally bought a drink, Moriarty probably would have tried to kick him out a long time ago, but that would have been a mistake. Under the suit was a man who was surprisingly well versed in combat, and he was hiding a custom made silenced 10mm pistol in one of his pockets. "_I do hope he doesn't turn out to be another goody goody. If he is fresh out of a vault, maybe his morals aren't quite as solid as the rest of these people._"

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Michael definitely wasn't used to this kind of attention. All the old western movies he'd watched usually depicted some kind of piano music playing somewhere in the background when the good guy walked into a saloon, but there was nothing but silence around him. The stares from the bar's other customers were enough to make him a little uncomfortable, but he pushed the feeling away and walked up to the counter. Sitting down at one of the seats, it took him a moment to start a conversation. The man in front of him was hideously deformed, reminding him of a few zombie movies, except he wasn't trying to eat any brains.

"You the bartender here?"

"Yeah, what can I get you man? You need anything?"

"Hmm.... Give me a second to think. A strong drink I guess."

"But... you're not going to hit me? Or even insult me?"

"I didn't plan on it. Maybe you look a little different, but as long as you speak English and don't attack me, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"A little different? Funny. Nice to see a decent man in this hole. Tell you what, don't let Moriarty know, but I'll give you a little discount."

"Sweet. A shot of whiskey without any dirt or piss in it, please."

He let out the weirdest laugh, and it occurred to Michael that the man's vocal chords were probably as rotten as his skin. Setting down a shot glass and pouring a strange amber liquid into it, Gob said "That's three caps."

"Good enough. Honestly expected a higher price for that." He picked up the glass and did his best to down the entire thing in one gulp. However, the sour expression on his face and his shuddering body was obvious.

"Take it easy. Fresh out of a vault and I'm willing to bet they had no alcohol in there. I'm surprised that you can even take one shot of this poison."

Chatting for a little while over a second shot, he found Gob to be much more useful that the rest of the town. Turns out bartenders really were prime sources of information. Michael found out more about the wasteland in ten minutes with Gob that he'd been able to pry out of the town's residents all day. One of the more useful pieces of information he got was about the two strange radio signals his pip-boy had begun to pick up when he exited the vault.

"Okay kid, you've got Galaxy News Radio and Enclave Radio. Enclave Radio is a bunch of propaganda and speeches about how some group of people left over from the pre-war United States government, now calling themselves the Enclave, will come back and restore peace, order, safety, blah blah blah. A few patriotic songs interspersed between the speeches is all you'll really hear if you choose to listen."

Michael stopped for a moment. Any group with ties to the old government probably had a bunker or base somewhere filled to the brim with pre-war tech and supplies. Getting in might not be an option, but they might still be interested in hiring a capable wastelander for some work. It might be his best opportunity for a new life if he couldn't find James.

"Do you know where these guys are located? I mean, a transmitter strong enough to broadcast over the entire wasteland has to be big enough to be obvious."

"They might not even exist anymore. The signal repeats itself over and over, so it could be a hundred years old. On the other hand, there's a bunch of hovering robots out in the wastes that run around broadcasting the station on loudspeakers, so maybe someone is home. As for where they are or if they exist anymore, your guess is as good as mine."

He tuned his pip-boy to the frequency briefly, hearing a rendition of the song Dixie for a few moments before turning the volume off. The signal was very clear, but his pip-boy's triangulation equipment couldn't get a lock on the direction of the transmission, much less the source. If the signal was from pre-war military equipment, then his chances of tracking the Enclave via their radio broadcasts was unlikely. "So what's this other one, Galaxy News Radio, all about?"

"Galaxy News Radio is on right now." He pointed over at the radio at the end of the counter, which seemed to have a human voice mixed into the static that was coming from the device. "I'd turn it up so you could actually hear the guy, but Moriarty gets really pissed at all the static. The signal used to be a lot better, but now you can barely hear it out this far from the D.C. ruins."

Michael switched his pip-boy to the station and turned the volume back up, only to be greeted by grinding static and a barely audible voice in the background. Quickly turning it off, he said to Gob "It used to be better?"

"Yeah. It's not like any of that loyalty and obedience crap on Enclave. Good music, good advice, and good talk from Three Dog. He's the guy that runs it, if you ever get closer to D.C. you might actually be able to hear him without any static."

"Okay, good to know. Speaking of the ruins, how much do you know about the D.C. downtown area?"

The mutated bartender knew even more about the ruins that the wasteland itself. Gob seemed to know every old landmark that was still standing. One of the better spots he mentioned was a town inhabited completely by ghouls deep within the D.C. ruins, hidden inside an old history museum.

"That's really good to know Gob; if they're half as nice as you, I might actually have a good spot to rest later."

"If you do try to go, stay out of sight and get inside that museum as soon as possible. The entire downtown area is filled with super mutants. They leave us ghouls alone for some reason, but if they get one look at you they'll attack with everything they got."

"So that's how you know all this stuff, eh? They attack unmutated humans but they leave you guys alone? Damn, you get all the fun of exploring and none of the risks."

Gob let out another one of his strange laughs. "None of the risks? Raiders, slavers, animals all still attack me the same as you. Plus, you've got nothing to fear from regular humans, but if a trigger happy bastard comes near me, they might mistake me for a feral ghoul and put some lead in between my eyes. Or maybe they'll be one of the bigots who doesn't care about the difference and shoots me anyway."

Michael let a small frown cross his face. "Sorry."

"Don't mention it. Personally, I'm willing to bet that a couple super mutants versus a human is much worse odds than a ghoul like me versus a couple humans. Those green things are strong enough to rip you in half with their bare hands, and they will if they get hungry."

"Huh. Guess we've all got something that sucks. Speaking of stuff that sucks, have you had any new customers in here lately? Maybe wearing a vault suit?"

"Yeah, another guy came in here a while back. Asking lots of questions just like you. Think his name was James. Moriarty hit me upside the head before I got much of a chance to talk to him though. He'd know more than me. What's up with him and you? You followed him out of that vault?"

Michael, after hesitating for a moment, decided to only tell half the story. "He's my dad. He ran out of the vault in the middle of the night. That got everyone pissed at me, and I had to leave before they decided to put a bullet in my head. I have to drag his ass back to the vault and let them put him on trial if I ever expect to get back in."

Gob was quiet, thinking heavily for a few seconds before he could come up with an adequate response. "Jesus. Choosing between your dad and your home. That sounds fucked up."

"I already chose."

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Seeing a lack of drinking on the part of his newest customer, Moriarty decided that now was a good time to interrupt the conversation. Michael had been unaware, but the dirty bastard had been listening to the two of them around the corner in his office. He knew he would be able to twist this kid around anyway he wanted to. Walking up from behind the counter, he proceeded to push Gob aside before he said "Look here, another stray from the vault. You look just like your father."

The sentence stopped Michael right before his verbal attempt to defend Gob. "My dad? Do you know anything about him, or where he went?"

"Ka-ching" was the sound that went off in Moriarty's head. He decided that letting the kid in on his dad's history would be a fun way to bring caps out of him. "I remember when the two of you first came in here almost twenty years ago. Your dad was trying to find the safest place he could take your newborn ass, and I guess he actually managed to convince the people in that vault to let him in. I tell ya, the stuff we talked about a few days ago was unbelievable. The crap they force down your throats and call it an education, it's just funny. They really brainwash you guys in those caves."

Fortunately, the man was actually telling the truth. Michael may not have normally been the gullible type, but he was eating out of Moriarty's hand at this point. "Are you fucking with me? That bastard lied about that shit too? I was born outside..... he brought me to the vault.... goddammit, I can't believe this."

"Swear on me mum's grave kid. Sorry to hear it, especially considering that he's probably been lying about a bunch of other stuff."

"Then tell me everything you two talked about. I've got to find a way to track him down."

"Sorry, but you're lucky I told ya this much. Nothing's free in my bar. For a hundred caps I could tell you everything you'd need to know about that fella."

Anger started to rear its ugly head deep within Michael. The news of his past was enough to have him pissed, but now this guy was going to pull almost all of his remaining caps out of him. "I can't exactly afford that. Look at me. Until I get some work around here, I'm not going to be able to pay that much."

"You need work eh? Maybe a capable young lad like you can do me a favor. There's a junkie bitch who stole a fortune in caps from me a long while back. Bring her back, or at least her head. That'll be good enough for me to hand over the information you want."

"You mean Silver, don't you?"

It was Moriarty's turn to be surprised. How the hell could this kid already know about her? "How do you know her?"

"She saved my life. I wouldn't have made it to Megaton without her. I don't care even if you're telling the truth and she's lying about how you forced her to whore herself to the town, with the occasional rape from you. There's no way I'm going to do anything to her."

A scowl replaced the smile Moriarty had forced through the whole conversation. "Well, looks like you're fucked kid. Not likely to find your dad now."

"Guess I am fucked. Looks like it will take the last of my caps." Michael pulled out the small bag in the inside pocket of his jumpsuit and counted out a hundred caps. It meant he had almost no money left, but he had no choice. The man's eyes lit up, and he quickly scooped the caps into his own pocket.

"Good for you kid. I'll take this as an apology for your rude behavior. Come back with a hundred more caps if you actually want some news on your daddy."

Rage instantly shot through his veins and infected his mind like a virus. This was not lost on the saloon owner; he began to reach for the shotgun under the counter. But before Moriarty could even touch the weapon, Michael had launched himself across the bar and pinned the man to the ground. Much as he tried, Moriarty found that the kid's strength was more than enough to keep him on the ground.

After a few seconds of complete silence in the building, Michael began to regain control as his wrath boiled away. He stood up and extended his hand downward to Moriarty. He accepted, pulling himself up. "Well, you're a quick little bugger aren't you?"

"If you're pissed that I won't bring back the woman you exploited and raped for years, then be as angry as you want. Find someone else to do it. I gave you the money, just tell me the information I need already."

Moriarty's face dissolved back into his normal neutral expression. "Let bygones be bygones? Fine. First, I've gotta say you have no idea how business works outside your vault. Respect is valued a lot more than caps in these wastes. I'm one man in a bar, you better watch your ass elsewhere."

"I'll do my best. But let's get back to the whole business-as-usual routine. Tell me about my dad already."

"Well, you might be slightly disappointed with what I have for you. Your daddy seemed interested in every place I mentioned. I can't know for certain which he headed for."

"Well, what did you tell him about?"

Moriarty quickly recapped how he had told James about all sorts of important places in the wasteland. The Brotherhood of Steel, a paramilitary organization descended from United States Army troops, had a well fortified base in the ruins of a building called the pentagon. The largest town in the area was at the end of the Potomac river, known as Rivet City. A large slaver town called Paradise Falls was the only "bad" place he had a chance of getting into alive. Most of the wasteland's traders used a small settlement to the northeast called Canterbury Commons as a base. Several smaller towns, most notably Girdershade, Arefu, and Big Town, made up what was left of any real civilization. And to top it all off, the radio station Gob had mentioned earlier, Galaxy News Radio, had been operating in the D.C. ruins for years now.

"All your dad really said was that he wanted to find someone who could tell him a lot about what's going on in the wasteland right now. Could have gone to any of those places, they'd all be useful in one way or another. He seemed really interested in that radio station, so I guess that's the first place you should check."

"You sure? I mean about the interested part."

"Yeah, he seemed to really like the attitude he heard through all the static. If he did go there, you should know that station is deep in the downtown ruins and the area is full of super mutants. The Brotherhood of Steel have a hard enough time surviving out there, and they've got the best weapons and armor in the wasteland. All I saw on him was a .32 pistol, I seriously doubt he could've survived long outside the city walls. If he did go to the D.C. ruins, the first super mutant he ran into would've had a fresh meal."

"Your optimism is wonderful. Thanks, I guess. One last question. If I decide to come back with more caps, would you give me a room?"

Moriarty broke out into a short laugh. "Like you said before, business as usual. No problem on you sleeping upstairs, if you've got a hundred and twenty caps."

"What? That much for a fucking room for twelve hours?"

"A fucking room indeed! I suppose I could shave the price a little, if you didn't want any of the special features. Fifty caps."

"Wait.... fucking room? Special features?" It took Michael a moment to get the insinuation. "Oh, you mean Nova over there. Nice, but I'm not sure I'll be able to come up with even fifty caps. If I do, I'll come back after dusk."

"If you change your mind, don't waste any time. Doubt any caravan merchants will be stingy with their caps tonight."

Forcing a smile to avoid his disgust, he turned around to leave. Before he could make his exit, he noticed a strange man in the corner of the establishment, who's hand was waving toward him at a rapid rate. "A business suit? In this world? I have got to hear what's he has to say."

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Mr. Burke was pleased to find that he had attracted the young boy's attention without having to leave his seat. As he walked over, he analyzed the lone wanderer for a moment now that he was closer. Two pistols in two holsters, and a submachine gun strapped to his bag. Doubtless he was a violent one. The computer device on his wrist was most interesting. A functional pip-boy perhaps? As well, his clothes were very clean in comparison to the rest of the town. The wrist computer and a clean vault suit definitely meant he was new to the desert. If he was as low on caps and as violent as Burke suspected, then maybe he finally had a willing accomplice in front of him.

Removing his pack and sitting down, the boy before him was amazingly polite. "Hello, my name is Michael. Am I correct in assuming that you were trying to catch my attention?"

"Yes. You may call me Mr. Burke. It certainly is refreshing to find someone with a sense of etiquette in this town. But since you are not a resident of this dilapidated collection of scrap, I suppose it is much more likely for you to be educated."

"Thank you. But if you haven't noticed, the area outside this scrap collection isn't exactly the Garden of Eden. It's the best these folks can do, and it may be the best I can do for a long time."

"Not necessarily. I know someone who could use a talented individual such as yourself, and I believe that you would find it quite pleasant to be in his favor."

"Perhaps you could be a little more forthcoming with the meaning of pleasant in this context?"

Even with his tinted glasses, it was difficult for him to keep a business face. This one was more than educated, he could actually speak the language. The ability to speak well could be a powerful weapon, even post-apocalypse. Most useful as an ally, most dangerous as an enemy. "There is a place of unusual luxury in this desert, and I can arrange for you to live there, along with enough caps to make life much easier. Provided you can do me a simple favor first."

Chills went up Michael's spine as he heard the word 'favor'. The man's suit had been bad enough, but the caps, the luxury, and this so-called favor were enough to set off alarms inside of him. Whatever he wanted was not going to end pleasantly. "I must mention that I am a man with his own code of ethics. Money is not enough if you would have me do something.... immoral."

"Of course. You see, this town is a blight on the wasteland, a blight that a very powerful and rich man would like to see erased. The bomb in this town is still quite alive, and anyone with some skill could easily reactivate it."

The poker face Michael had attempted to keep up disappeared, as well as the mental dictionary he had called on to keep suit with Mr. Burke. "Hold up a second, let me get this straight. Destroy Megaton? Along with at least a hundred people? How the hell can you expect me to do that?"

"It's quite simple." Burke produced a small device from his pocket. "Connecting this fusion pulse charge to one of the conventional explosive charges within the bomb will be enough to detonate them simultaneously, causing the weapon to go nuclear. After you have placed the charge, you may follow me to your reward, where we shall observe quite the fireworks display."

"I don't think you get me. When I said how the hell, I wasn't talking technical specs. For killing this many people, you'd better have a damn good reason."

"Five hundred caps after the charge is placed, with many more available when you arrive at your new suite. And a life of luxury to follow. Isn't that reason enough?"

Much as he tried to ignore it, Michael could feel the idea slipping through his mind. It was as if another voice was speaking with him.

_"Five hundred caps! A luxury suite! You can't refuse such an offer!"_

_"Killing a hundred innocent people is one hundred too many, even for something like that."_

_"You don't even know these people. They've been nearly useless in your search, and you've used all your money just finding out that he could be anywhere in the wasteland. With this kind of dough and a new home, it would be so much easier to keep looking for James. Or perhaps you can start a new life altogether, one without that prick of a father."_

After such a long period of silence, Burke became worried. Had he chosen poorly? He did not want to have to dispose of this boy, considering how long he had been waiting for someone capable in this town. Fortunately, he had found someone who was at least open to the idea.

"All right. Give it to me. Megaton will earn its name." He silently told himself that he was only taking the device so he could decide on both options later. Again, he worried that he might be simply deceiving himself.

Handing over the small apparatus, he smiled as he watched the young boy walk out of the saloon. "Finally. Today is my last day in this crater."

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Walking slowly down the ramp into the center of the crater, he stared at the bomb for nearly ten minutes. The preacher had come back over to him, but after a moment he gave up talking to the near-comatose wanderer. A hundred caps would be his reward, along with some gratitude from the town, if he dismantled the bomb. But how much radiation would he get from trying to handle a pile of weapons-grade nuclear material? On the other hand, spending only ten seconds inside that case would be enough to earn five hundred caps plus more later, not to mention this promise of a luxury suite somewhere. It was hard to doubt Burke, given the clothing that the man was wearing. Images of his father came into his mind, saying things like _"You know what the right thing to do is."_

"Fuck you." Though he had been saying it to the image of James in his mind, the nearby preacher quickly became offended. "You would dare to insult a prophet in front of the shrine of the Lord? Ye shall be struck down by the almighty....."

"No, no! I was thinking about some stuff, I wasn't speaking to you!"

"Liar! Deceiver! Your words are meant only to spread...."

He pulled one of his pistols from its holster and leveled it slowly for effect. "Take a lunch break preacher. I don't have any problems with you, but I need a moment to think without you yelling at me."

Without another word, the man walked away toward his church. Several people nearby were staring at him. He tried to ignore them and continued to concentrate on the issue at hand. With his father's image fading from his mind, Amata's began to come up. _"You'd really kill all these people? Not to mention that this bomb is really close to the vault. Even if I'm gone, you can still care about some other people."_

It seemed like a stupid idea, but he decided that it was enough. Even if he ignored the situation, Burke would easily find someone else later if he didn't disarm the bomb. He may have fancied himself a sheriff over a reactor technician back in the vault, but he had some lives to save. Setting his pack on the ground, he pulled his makeshift toolkit out along with a bottle filled with rad-x. Downing a few of the pills, he said silently to himself "_Here's to growing a third arm._"

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There were several small access plates on the bomb, but they all were horribly rusted. He pulled the large chisel and hammer from his satchel, and began to pry open one of the plates. The murky water flowing into his boots was disgusting, the banging he was making was starting to hurt his ears, and the people who had been staring before were now beginning to gather around, albeit at a safe distance. As soon as the plate came loose, a blast of hot air hit him in the face. A moment's panic was quickly replaced by rational thought. "_It's just air heated by the sun that couldn't escape the bomb. No worries._" He looked inside the hole and found a complete mess.

The trigger mechanism had been some kind of barometer-based altimeter, which should have triggered the weapon to airburst a few hundred yards before hitting the ground. He couldn't tell why it had failed, but the impact had completely broken it free from the detonator. As well, whatever power source had been running the mechanism was no longer charged or able to detonate the explosive, rendering it relatively inert. However, the central core of the weapon had amazingly remained intact, suspended right in front of the maintenance plate he had opened. The explosives around the core appeared to be a simple plastique compound, which would be stable but still quite live even after two hundred years. He backed off for a moment and turned to the crowd. "Does anyone have a shovel they'd mind selling me?"

Five minutes and five less caps later, he returned to the site re-armed for the job at hand. Attempting to peel the explosives off of the core with his hands would likely kill him inside of a few minutes, so he carefully used the shovel to remove pieces of the conventional explosives from the side of the bomb. He carefully set the material in the water next to the bomb casing. Although several members of the crowd gasped when he produced explosive material from the inside of the bomb, he knew well that only a combination of high heat and pressure would set off plastic explosives. "Relax people, the stuff won't blow unless you've got a detonator cap in it."

Digging a small hole in the dirt next to the bomb, he proceeded to bury the scraped explosives. He wanted so badly to try and salvage the material for his own use, but there was no chance that would work. They were still radioactive after all, that happens when you sit next to a pile of nuclear material for two hundred years. After burying the material about a foot under the ground, he turned back to the bomb.

As far as he could tell, he had removed about a third of the explosives, which was a lot with access to only one side of the core. He placed the end of the shovel right against the mass. Roughly measuring from this distance, it seemed that the core was a little under ten inches in diameter. He plugged the number into his pip-boy. "Under ten inches.... maybe nine and a half.... if it's uranium, that volume would weigh about..... three hundred pounds. Great. And plutonium would be..... three hundred and fifteen. Wonderful."

He turned around. "Folks, the weapon can't go nuclear anymore. For an implosion to work, the core has to be completely surrounded by explosives going off simultaneously. But if you want the core removed, you're going to have to find someone who can lift three hundred pounds and somehow withstand a thousand rads a second. Sorry."

"You're saying it was still active before? Even after all these years?" Leo was standing at the edge of the crowd, eyes even wider than at the end of the conversation they'd had earlier.

"Yeah, but not anymore. It can't go off, but it's still radioactive as hell. I really don't see anyway to deal with that right now."

A small cheer went up around the crowd, much to Michael's surprise. They'd been living next to the bomb for years; he'd expected them to be unconcerned about detonation and more concerned about the radiation. He quickly put the access plate back in it's place and welded part of it shut. "Good as new. Or at least the same as before." Placing the tools back in the satchel, he stopped to check the geiger counter on his pip-boy. Seven hundred rads? And still climbing? He hadn't been within one foot of the core for more than a few seconds, and he had been over a yard away when he used the shovel to remove the explosives from the core. He'd even popped rad-x beforehand, how could he possibly get this kind of exposure in so little time?

Someone decided to fill him in at that exact moment. "Are you sure you should still be holding that shovel? I mean, you've got the thing right next to you." Looking down at his hand, he realized that he was holding the shovel like some kind of idiot posing for a picture. The blade, which had been touching the core less than a minute ago, was resting directly on his chest. He quickly turned the instrument around and threw it next to the bomb's casing. Putting away his tools and grabbing his bag, he said "Thanks for the cheers, but I have got to go get myself treated."

The crowd started to disperse, and he began to walk forward. Moving up the ramp to Moira's shop, he began to feel worse. It couldn't happen this quickly, even with this much exposure. He knew that most of it had to be just from knowing he was heavily irradiated, and the medical classes back in the vault were currently filling his mind.

_Now, without anti-radiation treatment, more than six hundred rads is guaranteed death within a few days. If you somehow expose yourself to this level, get clear of the source and inject every pack of radaway you've got. The longer you stay hot, the more of your internal organs turn into soup. Get in a bed and hope to hell that you've got enough medicine to flush out your system. Even if you do get your rad count down in time, your insides are going to be seriously messed up. If your nerves have survived, you'll need some med-x just to stay sane. Deep inject stimpacks liberally, and be sure to use one on any area that starts to blister. Stimpacks might not be enough, you might need surgery and replacements for any organs too badly damaged. The destruction of your immune system will also leave you very vulnerable to infections, so a sterile environment and several antibiotics will be necessary._

_In a worst case scenario, your bone marrow will be destroyed and you'll need a complicated transplant of stem cells to replace it. That kind of surgery has about a ten percent failure rate under good circumstances, to say nothing of a weakened radiation victim. Don't expect anyone with that kind of medical knowledge, or the resources to perform such a procedure, outside of a vault. Is that enough to convince you to stay, Michael?_

The image of Mr. Brotch and the rest of the class laughing brought him back out of his memories. Opening the door to Craterside Supply, he forced out a "Hi" before his dry throat sent him into a coughing spell. Radiation poisoning couldn't make you thirsty, right? Moira came over to him after grabbing several items out of a nearby box.

"Well, you're definitely looking under the weather. Or is it over the geiger counter? Ready to get treated?"

Her peppy attitude was too much in this situation. "Would you stop smiling and save my life already? I took way more radiation than I should have, even for this." He began to pull off his jumpsuit, leaving only his boxers on. "Sorry to be indecent, but this suit is at least as radioactive as me, if not more so."

"Of course! That's a good idea! Later I can try some of my other ideas out on your suit, since it isn't as sensitive as a human to toxic elements. Just lie down in the back there and relax, in a little while you'll be radiation free!"

Moving over to the bed she indicated in the back room, he settled down on his back and proceeded to close his eyes. "If anything strange starts to happen, get doc Church. And when you're done, get doc Church anyway. Half my organs have got to be dissolving right now, and your experimental medicines aren't going to help that."

"Sure! Now let's try treatment number one......"

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Not exactly going according to plan, eh? Radiation's a real bitch, and so's Moriarty. Most of the town seems to like him now that he handled the bomb, but how will Burke and his rich associates react to this situation? Will the Children of the Atom get pissed too, especially after he held a gun on their prophet and defiled their altar? And what the hell is going on back in the vault? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!

Before you all leave, I must give massive credit to Omega Gilgamesh, god of radioactivity, for all the real-life information about radiation and nuclear bombs. I can't believe how much stuff you sent me dude, consider this chapter dedicated to you. For every complainer out there, a lot more happens to a person in real life than simple death at a thousand rads. Radaway is a great invention, but significant physical injury to the body would remain after high levels, no matter how quickly you got rid of your rads. My story anyway :)


	9. Politics and Religion

Our hero's gone through quite the ordeal in the last couple of hours. His first day in the wasteland town of Megaton has been pretty good to him, with the exception of a massive radiation dose. The vault's finally starting to get its act together, but will Alphonse get himself released before a new government is in place? And if he does, will he be able to get any of his power back? And don't forget about the wanderer, most of the town's people seem happy he disarmed the bomb, but what of the other elements in town that told him not to?

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Chapter 9 – Politics and Religion

"Alphonse, I need to speak with you."

The former overseer turned around, amazed to hear such words in his daughter's voice. "Don't call me that. I'm your father."

Surprisingly, that statement only brought a smile out of his daughter. "I think we need to keep things formal. It's going to be Alphonse for the time being." His recent probation had been accepted by most of the vault's residents, but only a small percentage had welcomed the idea. After three years, he had hoped that Amata had come to her senses, but the exact opposite was true. She had been one of the few who had nearly prevented his release through their use of the so-called law, but they hadn't succeeded. The whole idea of the law applying to him was somewhat amusing, but his daughter's attitude was far from funny.

"Very well. What is it dear?"

The smile disappeared when he spoke the word 'dear'. "Since so much of the vault is enamored with your story about rescuing me and stopping Thomas Mitchell from killing off the vault, I think your help would be useful in ensuring that Michael is able to one day return to the vault."

"After this sort of event, you wish to bring him back? I will not allow him in, there will be no more death and violence in my vault."

"You know he had nothing to do with all this. You can't just keep him out there because of his dad. If he does bring back his dad back like he told the officers, will you let him in then?"

"No Amata. James's exile in the wasteland is punishment enough."

She forced a smile back onto her face. "Let me try to change your mind. The officers didn't just say Michael intended to bring back James, they also said that he took credit for killing overseer Mitchell and officer Mack. Who is telling the truth, I wonder? It's strange that you said one of them injected me with med-x, considering that I had both of them at gunpoint at the time."

The negotiator's smile Alphonse had been forcing during the conversation disappeared. "You really think I'd lie about that?"

"Maybe. Perhaps you're also the one who erased the security recordings..... at least not before a copy was made anyway."

His expression changed to an angry one as he grabbed Amata by the shoulder. "Well then, you're going to have to give me that tape."

Quickly forcing his hand off her shoulder just as Michael had taught her, Amata pulled her father's arm backwards and behind his back. "You really think you can do something like this to me? Mack and Thomas were armed, you're not."

"You must give it to me. For the sake of the vault; you know it's the best course of action."

Slowly increasing the pressure on his limb, she whispered in his ear. "Wrong. It's not best for the vault, just best for you. I'm willing to let you slither out of that cell, but in exchange you're helping me keep the vault open, at least to Michael."

Despite the pain and adrenaline, he found himself unable to wrestle away from her grip. After a few moments he responded "It's better I stay in jail than my daughter is corrupted further. I will have none of this, and you know that without my support the chances of him coming back inside are slim at best. If you give me the tape, perhaps I won't use what's left of my connections to make life difficult for his former friends. Stanley might still get his medication, officer Gomez might not be investigated for treason and aiding a felon, and maybe even...."

His words were too much for Amata. She placed a foot in front of Alphonse's leg and pushed forward, slamming him to the ground. She yelled as loud as she dared in the unoccupied hall. "You're going to be done long before you can do any of those things. If you don't accept my proposal, things will go bad for you tomorrow. He's getting in, with or without your help."

He climbed back to his feet, a small trickle of blood coming from his nose. "Perhaps you should try discussing this at the upcoming meeting tomorrow. In the mean time, get some sleep. It's late and you've been through quite the ordeal recently, resting might give you a clearer perspective on the situation."

Without another word, Alphonse turned around and continued walking down the corridor, leaving his stunned daughter behind him. Doing her best to keep an upbeat attitude on her face, she turned around and went back to her quarters. She smiled at everyone she walked by, but it was forced. There was nothing to be happy about.

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"Okay, not good, not good."

For the first time in a long time, Moira found herself panicking. All but one of her treatments had been ineffective. The final one had succeeded in reducing his rad count, but not by much. He was still quite radioactive. Grabbing her few packs of radaway, she suspended them and inserted their needles into his veins. Afterward, she bolted outside and found Lucas Simms not far from her store.

"Sheriff! I need your help quick!"

He turned around, noticing an unusually concerned expression on her face. "What's wrong?"

"Michael! My anti-radiation treatments were.... a little less than effective. I need to get him down to the doc right away!"

He had been watching Michael disarm the weapon earlier from the balcony outside of his house. When the boy had used tools to keep himself distanced from the bomb, Lucas had thought that Michael had taken little radiation, perhaps none at all. "How bad is it?"

"Uh... I think he's at a little over six hundred."

"Six hundred! Why the hell didn't you get the doc already!" He quickly ran into Moira's shop and began to hoist the unconscious boy out of the bed. The radaway packs were still partially filled, but much stronger medication would be needed at his exposure level. As Lucas pulled him out of the bed, the needles pulled themselves from his veins, flopping around and dispensing the rest of the anti-radiation medicine onto the floor. Putting herself under Michael's other shoulder, she told Lucas "I'm sorry, I thought my treatments would be more effective."

"No time, hurry up!" With one of them on each side of him, they carried Michael down to the town clinic, his feet dragging all the way there. Kicking the door open, Lucas yelled out "Where the hell are you Church?"

The doctor came out of the back room, a clipboard in hand. "What happened?"

They set Michael down on the bed in the examination room. "Heavy radiation exposure, and it was a while ago. At least six hundred rads."

The doctor's eyes changed to the same panicked state as Lucas and Moria's. As he reached inside one of the boxes on a shelf, he decided to comment "This won't be cheap or easy. I hope for his sake he's got a lot of caps on him."

"You bastard! He's dying!" Moira looked as though she was ready to beat the doctor.

"Do you know how hard it is to get this stuff? All the pre-war compounds are long gone, and the guys working in wasteland labs charge whatever they want. Using all this stuff without any money means I won't be able to buy more of it, and then the next person dies because I don't have any medicine."

Lucas pulled a small bag from his pocket. He had promised Michael a hundred caps if he succeeded in disarming the town's bomb, but he had never imagined that they would be spent this way. "A down payment. Now get to work!"

"Fine." The doctor produced two strange syringes filled with blue liquid and carefully injected them into his venae cavae. "This stuff's for emergencies only, his heart'll seize up if I give him anymore. Problem is, you're supposed to use it right after you get exposed. Beyond these, a lot of packs of radaway, some stimpacks for the damaged tissue, and a week's worth of rest is the best I can do with the equipment I've got."

Watching the doctor set up several packs of radaway on an IV stand, Moira started to cry. Lucas was amazed, as the woman usually showed nothing but happiness all day long. Doing his best to hug her for a moment, he said "Don't worry. He's a tough kid, he'd going to be fine."

"Your optimism is touching, but those two were already worth eighty caps. He's going to owe me a lot when he gets up." Before Moira or Lucas could protest, he said "Don't worry. With a hundred down, I think I can trust him to pay the rest after he gets up. Like you said, he's a tough kid. Maybe I'll get him to make a few trade runs with the Rivet City science labs."

"Alone? No way! I'm paying the rest of the caps, it's my fault."

Church was just as surprised as the sheriff by Moria's new emotions. "Well, you own a giant shop, so I guess I could foreclose on you if you can't afford it."

Lucas's face became as cross as it could be. "I swear I'm kicking you out of town for extortion if you try to pull that on her."

"Christ, I'm kidding. Get out of here, I've got work to do." The two slowly left the office, Lucas giving the man one last stare before closing the door.

"How the hell am I supposed to run a business with people like that?"

------------------------------------------------------------

After a full day of attempting to find support for her side, Amata had been disappointed to find that a lot of the vault still put some blame on Michael for the events a few days ago, even with James being the first to leave and overseer Thomas's homicidal actions. So far, the only ones who strongly supported her were the ones who knew about Alphonse's lies. Such a small percentage was unlikely to override the votes of the angrier residents, to say nothing of how her father would twist things around.

The moment Amata got back to her quarters and closed the door, her rage boiled out of her before she even realized what was happening. Screaming like a beast, she picked up a chair and smashed it against the mirror on the wall. Shards of glass flew from the impact, and she dropped the chair on the ground before simply allowing gravity to pull her to the floor. She began to cry harder than she ever had, even more than when Michael had been shot by her own father so many years ago.

A rush of pain went through her hand, she raised her arm to find that she had managed to pick up a rather large shard of glass when she fell down. The tears began to dry as she stared at the wound on her hand, the cut beginning to send thoughts through her mind. "_Is he still alive out there? Has he gotten hurt? How is he doing now that he thinks I'm gone? How is he feeling?_"

Time was no longer recognizable to her. She had no idea how long she had been on the floor before she heard a knock at the door. "Vault security, open up!"

She walked over to the door calmly, undoing the lock with the shard still lodged in her hand. Officer Taylor was at the door, with one hand on the pistol in his holster. "How can I help you officer?"

He froze for a moment. Amata's face was red and swollen, with tears still on her. The back of the room had a chair on its side and the mirror mounted on the wall was smashed into tiny pieces. But what was most disturbing to the old officer was the fact that she had an inch of glass sticking out of the side of her right hand and she didn't even seem to notice it. "What happened to you? There were reports of a disturbance by several other residents."

She did her best to put on a smile. "Nothing's wrong. Just had a little accident. You can go about your patrol Taylor, I'll see you tomorrow at the meeting, okay?"

"Accident? Your mirror is smashed and you've got glass in your hand. What happened?"

"It's no problem, really. Just leave me be."

He grabbed her hand and brought it up to both of their faces. "This is serious stuff. I don't care how depressed you are, we're all reeling from what's going on. You're going to the infirmary now."

She pulled her arm back. "Not much of a point, considering that this vault has no doctor now. Just go, I've got enough stuff in here to treat it."

Defeated, the officer could only turn around and walk away. Shutting the door, she wandered back over to the mirror and looked in it. Most of the glass was gone, and what little remained was far from intact, but she could still see her image. It was distorted, just like the way things were now.

"_Nothing will be right again until you come back. He won't keep you out of here, I don't care what happens_."

She walked over to the counter in their room and produced the small first aid kit Michael had insisted they keep in their room. Carefully extracting the glass, she felt the pain disappear as she thought about Michael out in the wasteland, guns blazing, clothed in ragtag leather armor, standing on top of a pile of mutant bodies, all the while still carrying that typical scoundrel smile on his face. An unlikely scenario, but the idea was enough to bring a small chuckle out of her. Slowly wrapping her hand, she said to herself "_He's always wanted to go out there. I hope he's at least having a little fun._"

------------------------------------------------------------

Pain was an understatement. His nerves were screaming for relief. Struggling just to open his eyes, Michael once again found himself staring into a white light. However, this time around, he was not scared. Pain didn't exist if you were dead, right? That was logical. As his eyes began to adjust, he looked around the room, despite the agony in his neck and back as the muscles moved about. He was definitely not in Moira's store anymore, but the room did look a little familiar.

"That was pretty stupid." Michael turned his head toward the source of the sound. Church had entered the room, and after a moment walked over to his bed. "You took a massive dose of radiation and chose Moira's experiments over my medicine? I'm not trying to be an asshole, but next time you get that messed up, you should have a doctor at the top of your list."

"Well, yeah, but she needed someone to test the stuff on. What happened to me?"

"You passed out and Moira's treatments weren't enough. She said that one of them lowered your rad count, but my best guess is that it only took about a hundred out of you. I don't know why she took so long to get you here, but it should have been sooner. You've been under for a little over twenty-four hours, and I've juiced you up with so much radaway that I'm honestly worried you might be the first person to experience side effects from that stuff. For your sake, I hope it's not habit-forming at this high of a dose."

He shut his eyes and attempted to stretch his muscles, but the pain was too much. He let out a short scream.

The doctor came over to him, a full dose of med-x in his hand. "Take it easy! If you want to live, you're going to have to rest for a while. Just because you're awake doesn't mean anything. The only reason you're awake right now is because I dialed back the dose of med-x."

Michael looked over at the medicine. "I swear, if it takes my last breath, I'll find a way to pay you back for all this."

"You really think I'd treat you on good faith, especially after the tight trade you pulled on me your first day here? You don't owe me any caps, but you'll end up owing Lucas some by the time you're off that bed, and a lot more to Moira. They're the ones who dragged you in here, he fronted a hundred caps and she promised the rest." He injected the medicine into Michael and walked away, leaving the young man with a few final thoughts before drifting into sleep.

"_I spent my reward on healing myself..... and I'm probably not getting an armored vault suit after she shells out so many caps.... I'm not exactly making any money...._"

-------------------------------------------------------------

While Michael was fighting for his life, the people in Vault 101 had finally begun to reorganize their lives after the incident that had happened. Just as it had gone years ago when Alphonse attempted to kill Michael, they decided that a general meeting of all residents was the best way to put things back in place. Amata arrived ten minutes early, but every chair had already been taken. Apparently most of the vault had thought the same as her, and nearly all of the residents had arrived early. The room was filled to the brim, with five people sitting at a table at the front of the room. She was happy to know that Stanley and Mr. Brotch had been selected for the temporary council.

She was a little worried about the third choice, officer Gomez, since he had been a fellow officer. He was a good friend of Michael, but he had killed two officers and executed a third on the way out of the vault. Who Gomez would side with in that situation was unknown to her. Amata still considered him a good choice, seeing as the last two were a little less than perfect.

Alan Mack was the fourth, he was the father of Steve Mack, the sadistic officer who'd tried to torture her when no one could find Michael during his escape. Alan was almost as bad as her father, he'd gone through the halls all day since the incident, blaming everything on James and Michael. At least he thought that Alphonse had been the one to kill Steve, along with overseer Thomas. He definitely wouldn't vote to put her father in charge.

The final member of the council was security chief Hannon. Although initially somewhat ambiguous when Michael had left, he had become enraged when he found his son Paul killed by radroaches later that day. The day after the escape, he actually came up to Amata, grabbed her by the collar, and said to her face "If your little boyfriend comes back with his dad, I swear I'll kill them both in front of you. Slowly. It's their fault, and they're gonna pay." He'd calmed down a little since the incident, but she was still worried about what a grieving father might do when given this much power.

Seeing her father nearby, she quietly approached him from behind and started speaking to him, making him jump. "Last chance Alphonse."

He turned around and stared at her for a moment. "I don't believe you'd do it."

"You'd better believe I would. You don't have control of me anymore. You always wanted it out of everyone, but even more so out of me, because I was your daughter. I got lucky, and I'm afraid to think what kind of shape I'd be in if I hadn't had the support of my friends, especially Michael."

For nearly a minute, he stared deep into Amata's eyes, a cross look on his face, attempting to reengage the same control he used to have over her. Her response, a simple smile as she looked straight back at him, stayed exactly the same the whole time. "Not going to work, _daddy_."

The cross look on his face changed to one of extreme anger. "Fine. I'll let him back in, but you're going to see a lot of things change around here. No one is going to pull that same trick as James."

"Fine. Go take the seat in the front row they saved for the 'prisoner', didn't you see it when you came in?"

He looked at the front of the room. One of the seats directly in front of the council table was indeed empty. Forcing his typical neutral expression, he moved to the front of the room and sat down. As soon as he arrived, Stanley stood up. "It seems like everyone's here. Quiet down, and let's get this started. I suppose there are really only a few things on our list here. First, there is the issue of a new overseer."

Amata tried to step to the front of the crowd, but was surprised to find that Butch had already raised his hand. Stanley pointed at Butch and said "Yes?"

He cleared his throat before speaking. "We all lost someone, or at least came close to losing someone, during that escape. We can't blame it all on Michael and James, Thomas ordered his officers to kill on sight anyone else who was trying to get out. That's what got Mary and Tom Holden killed. Jonas also died because of Thomas. He had infinite power in his hands, and no one could stop him. We can't afford to put another overseer in place, no matter who it is. We need to try something else, like a permanent council.

Amata finally made it to the front of the crowd. Placing her hand in the air, Stanley pointed to her. Alphonse turned around just in time to see his daughter speak. "No matter who the new overseer is, that's too much power. Twice in three years we've seen abuse from people who we thought were capable leaders. Whether power corrupts or we're horrible at picking leaders is anyone's guess, but we can't go around handing out lifetime kingships. If you all really can't live with only a council, the overseer should be reelected every few years. We need to have something to keep that much power in check."

Alphonse simply couldn't comprehend why his daughter was acting this way. He'd raised her, alone, since she was a small child. He had instilled his values in her, she should agree with his sense of right and wrong. She should have been more than willing to support his return to power. He stood up, not waiting for any kind of approval to speak.

"As much as the idea of democracy might appeal to the people of this vault, they must realize that in two hundred years, the current order has kept us safe and happy. Yes there have been a few incidents in recent times, but the blame does partially rest on James and his son. You all know that this system is best."

"Incidents? You can't put the blame on Michael for your attempt to murder him." Amata surprised herself, she had sworn that she would not get angry at her father today, especially not during a situation as important as this. "Last time I checked, you received a life sentence. Why aren't you in jail right now?"

Alan chose to interrupt at that moment. "We will have order in this meeting. No more talking out of turn. As for Alphonse, his sentence is later on our agenda."

"Actually, I request that we discuss my sentence now, as it is useless for me to participate in these proceedings if you simply banish me to a cell at the end."

"Talk out of turn again Alphonse, and there will be no discussion at all on your sentence." Officer Gomez flashed a quick smile toward Amata. Along with her, he was one of the few people who knew that Michael had killed overseer Thomas and officer Mack. The rest of the vault had bought into Alphonse's heroic story when he'd carried an unconscious Amata into the infirmary, but Gomez had managed to make several copies of the security recordings before Alphonse could destroy them.

The small group had mutually agreed to allow Amata to reveal the truth at the right moment. Though she wanted badly to do so now, the smile Gomez was wearing calmed her, and the earlier agreement.... or rather blackmailing.... of her father had assured his cooperation in her plans for the future. Whispers were starting to go through the room, ceasing as soon as Stanley spoke. "Alphonse has a point. We may as well get this issue out of the way first."

Amata was fortunate to be the first called upon after Stanley's address. "The fact is that Alphonse attempted to murder Michael, and received a life sentence for it. Regardless of what Michael or Alphonse did a few days ago, the fact remains that we are looking at a man who was already tried and judged."

Hannon was the first to respond to her question. "His previous actions still stand, but we must consider what he did during the escape. How many people did he save by calming the chaos that day?"

Not waiting a moment, Amata quickly responded "You're saying that you, as security chief, didn't have the power to order all officers to stand down after Thomas's death? Not to mention that all the orders my father issued went through you first."

Gomez stopped her. "I think we all might be a little confused as to exactly what happened that day. Since several different ideas exist, perhaps we should all listen to Alphonse's story one more time. That way, we'll know for sure what happened. After all, you wouldn't lie to us, would you Alphonse?"

Amata did her best to hide the smile creeping across her face, but it wasn't enough. Despite Alphonse's neutral expression, she was sure that the words had unnerved her father. Allen Mack spoke up. "That is a good idea. We should clarify such information before we proceed further on any such topic. But let's not just listen to Alphonse. Will someone please fetch a copy of the day's security recordings?"

Chief Hannon quickly cut him off. "I already tried to get a copy of the recordings, but someone erased them after the incident. They used Thomas's access codes, so there's no telling who it was. We will have to settle for Alphonse's statement. Please, proceed."

The former overseer nodded, and began to retell his tall tale. Thomas and Mack torturing Amata. The two releasing him in an effort to pry information out of Amata. The pair dosing up Amata on med-x and trying to use her for bait. Alphonse's epic struggle, during which he killed both Thomas and officer Mack. Michael coming into the office, and Alphonse telling him that Amata is dead. Michael running out of the office in a state of rage.

"I know some of you would have liked to see Michael stay, but he was too dangerous for this vault. One day you'll all realize how important it was for that boy to follow his father out into the wasteland."

Mr. Brotch was the first to speak afterward. "That was not your choice to make Alphonse. Though trickery in such a matter is not punishable, it is something I will condemn you for. Does anyone else have anything to add to this discussion before we vote on Alphonse's fate?"

With no response, even from Amata, he continued. "Very well. Several booths have been set up in the next room. Several officers will be on hand with a population list to prevent multiple votes. Write one word, release or jail, on the paper provided. You have one hour to vote, then return to this room, where we will count the ballots and continue our discussion on the vault's future."

Everyone began to file out of the room, with the majority of people heading for the bathrooms or the cafeteria. Intending to get a fresh bag of potato crisps, she managed to nearly run head first into Susie. Amata had been on the receiving end of some hatred from Susie since Michael had left, mostly because officer Mack had been her older brother.

"First your father killed my older brother Mack, that pissed me off. Then Gomez showed me last night that it was really Michael. But after seeing that video, I have a hard time blaming him for putting a bullet in my brother. I still miss him, but I can't believe he did that stuff to you."

Amata gave her a cross look. "Why were you with Gomez last night? Or do I even want to know?"

Susie giggled, pushing Amata with one hand. "You know exactly why, because of his.... attributes. Don't worry, the secret's safe with me. How many other people know?"

"Enough. And there's enough copies of the tape to ensure Alphonse's cooperation."

"Cooperation? In what?"

"This vault isn't going to be ruled by an iron fist, and Michael's going to get back in here someday."

As they arrived at the cafeteria, Susie pulled out a ration chit and inserted it into one of the vending machines. "I might be able to help a little. I'm not much of a speaker, but I'll stand up for your boy when we get back in there."

Selecting a bag of potato crisps for Susie, she pulled the snack from the machine before her friend could respond. "Hey, I wanted a snack cake!"

Amata handed her a chit before responding to Susie. "Just playing around. But if you do throw in a few words at the meeting, I'll be really grateful."

Retrieving the sweet pastry from the machine, she turned toward Amata and put her face a few inches from hers, all the while displaying her favorite sensuous smile. She slowly moved her hand up to Amata's shoulder, rubbing gently as she said "How grateful is grateful?"

Amata rolled her eyes as she pushed Susie away. "You're never going to give up, are you?"

"On a pair like you and Michael? Not a chance."

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Dammit. Wake up Leo, I actually need your help."

Moira and Lucas hadn't been the only ones concerned about Michael after his radiation exposure. While visiting the doc for some meds to calm his addiction, Leo had decided that he was going to stay a while and 'watch out' for Michael. As if someone was going to hurt him. All the lazy kid had done was fall asleep in the doc's favorite chair, but now Church had some use for him.

"I said wake up moron!" He grabbed the boy by the neck with both hands and started shaking him.

Wide eyes and a few coughs later, Leo was able to respond "I'm up, I'm up! What the hell's the problem?"

Church pointed at Michael, still lying on the bed, not moving a muscle. "That's the problem. There's too much damage to his body, his heart rate and blood pressure have been slowly dropping for the last hour. I need some steroids and amphetamine derivatives to keep his heart going. Go get them now."

"Huh? Ampha-what? Where do I get that stuff?"

The doctor grabbed him again, this time by the collar, and pulled him to his feet. "You stupid addict, don't you even know what was in the shit you were taking? Go get every damn one of your drugs, now!"

Without a word, Leo went over to Michael's jumpsuit, still folded on top of his pack in the corner, and quickly pulled the key from one of the pockets. Running up the ramps to a building at the top of the town's crater, he virtually broke down the door to the water processing plant.

Walter, the older man the town depended on to keep their purifier running, was surprised to find the young man busting in the door. Trying to fix one of the main filters, his tools fell to the floor as he threw up his hands. "What the hell's going on?"

"Nothing, just ignore me!" He ran over to the back of the plant and unlocked the drawer of the desk he had told Michael about earlier. He decided to pull the drawer completely out of the desk, as he had way too many drugs to carry with his hands. Needless to say, the image of Leo running out of the plant with a desk drawer full of drugs was enough to make the old man wonder if he really should have been allowing Leo to use the plant as a hangout after hours.

Arriving less than a minute later, Leo ran into the clinic and shoved the drawer in Church's face. "Here, it's all I got."

"Great. You completed a simple task." The doc took the drawer from Leo and pulled a small container of Buffout out of it. "Get him to swallow four of these. Four exactly, and don't choke him."

Letting the boy go to work on the unconscious vault escapee, he pulled several jet canisters from the drawer and brought them over to the small lab table on the other side of the room. Much as he wished there was some other way, the conventional kind of life support equipment Michael needed was out of the doctor's reach. He started to work on distilling the chemicals in front of him.

---------------------------------------------------------------

As the people filed back into the room, several officers brought the small baskets from the booths to the council table. A few minutes of counting was all it took. Standing up, Stanley said "With 56% in favor, Alphonse is released."

Amata was glad to find that no cheers went up around the room, only whispers. Fifty-six percent was slim, but it was enough to get Alphonse out of a cell. She'd actually hoped that Alphonse would still get thrown back in, even without her revealing his lies. If he had to be out, she only hoped that he'd live up to his side of the agreement.

Stanley continued on. "All right, now let's get back to the issue of a new government for the vault. We have heard the proposals of Butch and Amata, as well as the counterargument provided by Alphonse. Does anyone have an idea that would please all of the vault's residents?"

Mr. Brotch chose to respond. "If you would mind a suggestion coming straight from the front of the room, I propose a mixture of a small council and an overseer, both elected every few years. It would allow for quick executive decisions, provide the checks and balances mentioned earlier, and ensure that no one would be able to take power without the consent of the vault."

A low murmur went up through the room. Several arguments over specific elements of such a government started to burst out over the room between the residents. Amata was happy to find that so many of the vault's residents seemed open to the idea, even if agreeing on it wasn't easy. Making her way around the room, she did her best to try to get the residents to compromise.

After some debate, it seemed as though the people were ready to agree on a three person council ruling alongside an overseer. Standing up, Alan addressed the crowd. "I don't think we need secret ballots for this kind of decision. The proposed government is that of an overseer and a three person council, the overseer elected every three years and the council members every single year. With the various powers split between the two groups as we have discussed, do you agree with putting this system in place?"

Most of the room placed their hands in the air and voiced their approval. An estimate would put the number at over three fourths in favor, which was more than enough to avoid an actual count.

After the five at the front of the room went through a quiet discussion, Stanley stood up and addressed the crowd. "A draft of the new government's specifics will be emailed to all terminals tonight. Anyone who wishes to declare their candidacy for one of the positions should send a response to the terminal in the security office. Tomorrow we will have the same booths in place, along with a list of those who have declared themselves as candidates in the election. The booths will be open from eight to five, after which the votes will be counted in this room in front of any citizens who wish to watch. Afterward, at approximately five-thirty the results will be announced over the P.A. System for those who choose not to observe the tally."

----------------------------------------------------------

Michael was still lying in bed at the clinic in Megaton, but his circumstances had improved somewhat. The desperate use of Buffout and a constant dose of modified jet had kept him alive, but there was no telling how it had affected him. Given that he had been standing over Michael for eight hours straight, the tired doctor was finally grateful for Leo's presence.

"Hey addict, wake up and watch radiation boy for a few minutes. I'm absolutely starving, and one of your family had better have some steak cooked up in that restaurant."

Leo stood up and nodded. "You can count on me, I won't even sit down until you're back."

"Yeah, right." As soon as the doctor had left the office, Leo walked over and leaned back against the wall right where Church had been. He looked at the small face mask on Michael that had been rigged to slowly deliver small doses of the jet derivative every few minutes. "I hope you don't end up like me."

He looked over at the drawer on the table at the other side of the room, still nearly filled with all sorts of drugs. A voice was starting to pop up in his mind.

_"A little to take the edge off. That's all you need."_

Frowning, he fought with the idea for a few moments before someone else came into the office.

"Leo, you can rest now. I'll watch the young boy for a while."

"You're Sid, right?" Leo didn't know everyone in town personally, but he was well aware of this man and his obsession with the Church of Atom. He thought earlier about how Lucas said that the church was angry at Michael for tampering with the bomb.

"It's okay. I owe him a lot for helping me, I'm not leaving his side."

"Very well. You shall share in his punishment." Before Leo's brain could process the words, Sid produced a small knife and stabbed him in the stomach. "Atom has come to claim retribution for the actions of this man, and your assistance to him must not go unpunished." He slowly slumped to the floor as Sid turned his attention to Michael.

"Your dying body shall give birth to a trillion universes in the name of Atom, and his vengeance shall purge this town of its evil!" Raising the knife high, he plunged it downward toward Michael's chest.

Before the blade could make contact, a small impact on his back sent him forward, the knife flying from his hand and missing Michael by a few inches. Eleven more impacts, accompanied by what sounded like thunder to the dying man, pushed him forward onto Michael's prone form.

Pulling himself off Michael slowly, Sid turned around to gaze at the source of the sounds. Before he fell to the floor and closed his eyes for the last time, he saw an injured Leo on the ground, still pulling the trigger of Michael's pistol in an attempt to find more than twelve rounds in the magazine.

----------------------------------------------------------

After another short recess, the people of vault 101 gathered again to make another decision. Once everyone had assembled, Gomez stood up at the front of the room.

"The last topic of our discussion is the opening of the vault. Obviously we have multiple options, ranging from resealing the vault door again, or all the way up to interacting with the wasteland on a regular basis as if we were some sort of town. Does anyone have any arguments for any particular position?"

Once again, Alphonse stood up and addressed the room without waiting to be recognized. "The dangers inherent in an atomic wasteland are too much of a concern to open the vault. If...."

Gomez interrupted him quickly. "Again, you decide to speak out of turn as if you were leading these proceedings. Have the last three years not convinced you that you are no longer the overseer?"

"Well, not yet anyway."

The words brought forth a torrent of whispers and murmurs through the room, and after a few seconds Gomez responded to the statement. "Am I to assume that you are declaring your candidacy for the position of overseer?"

"Of course. There is no one else even remotely qualified for the job. With my apologies for speaking without the permission of the current council, may I continue my argument for keeping the vault sealed?"

Amata's hand had been raised since she had heard the words coming from her father's mouth. Stanley chose to speak before Gomez could respond. "Since Amata has chosen to actually gain permission before speaking, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while."

She cleared her throat before speaking. "Trade or scavenging would allow us to replenish our depleted supplies, as well as potentially giving us the parts we need to repair the vault systems that have either failed or required serious rerouting. A large number of us wish to leave the vault simply because we have been trapped underground our whole lives. As well, exposure to the world would be good for all of us, in more ways than simple recreation. Some fresh air and sunlight would be helpful in alleviating the depression that many of us are feeling from spending our entire lives in a closed artificial environment."

"My father has done his best to outline the potential threats outside, but I must disagree with him. I believe that the dangers of the outside are overstated at best, considering that we have no knowledge of the current environment. Right now, completely opening the vault is foolish, but some limited exploration and trade with any leftover remnants of humanity is something I believe is more beneficial to us than closing ourselves off."

Turning toward her father, she ended her monologue by saying "Alphonse, I think even you can come up with a reason to support this idea." The smile she gave him wasn't obvious to anyone but him, and it was more than enough to remind the former overseer of the evidence she was holding over him.

Stanley nodded toward Amata. "A good proposal, especially about the overstated dangers outside the vault. After all, our exploratory team did fairly well back in 2241."

The room exploded at the end of the sentence. The older residents were mad that he had betrayed the secret they were keeping from the younger generations, while those who were unaware turned toward the nearest resident over forty and proceeded to yell simple questions such as "What the hell?" On top of it all, Alphonse walked to the front of the room and attempted to grab Stanley.

With officer Gomez pulling Alphonse off, the whole room quieted as they turned to stare at the struggling men. "You betrayed us all! You took an oath to safeguard the vault! Officers, arrest him!"

Pulling the struggling man away, Gomez simply said "Times have changed. This information would have gotten out eventually. Since we aren't arresting him, we will not arrest you for assault. Return to your seat now."

As the defeated Alphonse sat down, the council members gathered to discuss the turn of events. After a few moments, Mr. Brotch turned around and addressed the crowd. "The information gathered by the scouting team will be sent to everyone's terminal tonight. We will delay any vote on opening the vault until two days from now, the day after voting on our new officials. Read over the material, and be sure to declare your candidacy for any position before midnight. This meeting is now adjourned."

-------------------------------------------------------------

A gunshot inside of Megaton was uncommon, given that the high town walls kept out any undesirable people the citizens chose to not let inside. Twelve gunshots in rapid succession was a complete first, and it brought nearly half the town to Church's clinic, all of them armed with whatever firearm or melee weapon they possessed. The scene inside was far from pretty.

Leo was slumped against the wall, a large wound in his stomach bleeding all over him. Sid, a resident who was a devout member of the Church of Atom, was lying on the floor with multiple bullet wounds in his back. A knife on the floor beside the bed and a pistol at Leo's side completed the strange crime scene.

Brandishing his assault rifle, the former raider named Jericho was the first into the room. Briefly looking over the situation, he stole a stimpack off one of the doctor's shelves and injected it into Leo's stomach. "Fuckin' lucky kid. Ten years ago I would've sat down and watched you bleed just for the fun of it."

Moving their way through the small building filled with people, Lucas and Church managed to make it to the front of the crowd after a moment. "What happened here?"

Jericho sat down in the doctor's chair and looked up at the two. "Beats me. Kid bleeding out of his stomach and the crazy churchee over there with a million bullets in his back. Stole one of the doc's stims and put it in the boy."

The doctor angrily stared at Jericho before saying "That was one of the fresh ones I traded with Michael for! That's worth at least forty caps to me!"

Lucas interrupted him. "It was well used. Take a look, Leo's already getting up."

Staggering somewhat, Leo spit a trace of blood laced saliva out onto the floor and retold the story of what had happened. Before he could finish, Confessor Cromwell interrupted him. "Heathen! Liar! You have joined with this wanderer and his attempts to destroy the church! You lured an innocent and pious man into this clinic so that you could further injure the Children of Atom!"

Sheriff Lucas had already figured out that Leo was telling the truth, but he thought a little reason might help calm the old man. "Leo's been in here all day, how could he have 'lured' Sid into the clinic? And why would an uninjured man like Sid have come into the clinic anyway, and with a knife no less?"

"Cease your questions! Atom is the ultimate authority in the universe, and he demands that vengeance be taken for this act! Michael, Leo, and Jericho must all be punished!" Before the confessor could utter another word, Jericho stood up and hit him in the head with his rifle butt. "God damn, that old man is annoying. Somebody drag his useless ass out of here."

Several other members of the church stepped forward, looking ready to accost both Jericho and Michael. They only possessed knives and clubs, but both the sheriff and Jericho were armed with much more deadly weapons. Lucas and Jericho both leveled their assault rifles and said nothing, hoping that the fanatics would simply give up. Cromwell's wife spoke, attempting to encourage the cult's members to press forward. "You heard my husband! Atom demands blood!"

A small _click_ went off right behind the woman as Jenny Stahl cocked the Chinese pistol she had pointed at the back of the confessor's wife. "Maya, you're a good woman. No one else needs to die today. Take a look at the scene, Sid tried to kill my brother and Michael, and he got what he deserved for it. No excuse, not even the wrath of Atom, is going to get you all off the hook for pushing this further. Pick up your husband and leave, or you'll be joining Sid."

After a few moments of eerie silence, the woman picked up her husband and, with the help of the members of the church present, carried his unconscious form out of the building. With their exit came a short conversation between Lucas and Jericho.

"I didn't know you cared so much about Leo and Michael."

"Damn preacher's been annoying me forever, calling me all sorts of heathen bullshit and what not. I been looking for an excuse to hit him for a long time."

"Still, you pissed off a bunch of people by not stepping out on this one."

"Then maybe you won't mind if I slit a few throats before the sun comes up tomorrow."

Lucas gave him a long stare. "I will mind. I aim to keep the peace in this town, and that's not going to help any."

"Well then watch out, because they're as angry at you as they are at me. You've got a kid and a town. I've got nothing, except that I spent half my life sleeping next to guys who'd kill a saint for five caps." Without another word, the former raider walked out of the office.

Leo got up and walked over to Michael's bag. Pulling out a fresh clip and reloading the borrowed weapon, he said "Do you think Michael will mind if I borrow one of his pistols?"

Lucas smiled his way. "In this situation? Probably not, as long as you put his other one under his pillow."

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The day after his attempted assassination, Michael had healed enough to be taken off the constant dosage of chems, though he was still unconscious. However, this was unknown to the people of his former home, as they were busy with the first instance of voting in the vault in the two hundred years since they'd been sealed inside. Amata arrived as early as she could to the voting booths, but the long line showed her that most of the vault's residents had been thinking the same.

Finally getting a spot in one of the booths fifteen minutes later, she picked up the printed ballot and looked at the choices. The ballot had several candidates listed for the positions of overseer and council representative. For the overseer, the first listed was Alphonse, but the other choices were Alan Mack, Chief Hannon, and..... Beatrice? "_The old woman's lost her last brain cell._"

Selecting Hannon for the position of overseer, she was even more surprised to find that the three council positions had so many choices. The ones that stood out to her were officer Gomez, Lucy Palmer, Ellen DeLoria, officer Taylor, Chip Taylor (the grandson of officer Taylor), Edwin Brotch, and..... Amata! Smiling, she filled in the box for herself before selecting her other choices. She thought for a moment to herself.

"Well, Gomez is a good choice. Lucy's nice, but she really doesn't seem like the type for a councilwoman. Ellen's a drunk, and officer Taylor's an old hardass. Both of them always loved my father anyway. Chip's an okay guy, I guess. Mr. Brotch is a great choice, plus he always supported me and Michael. I have to pick him."

After filling in a second box, she gave the other choices one last consideration. She marked down officer Gomez for the final choice, and slowly walked out of the booth. Depositing the slip in the large box near the room's exit, she knew that the next nine hours weren't going to go by fast enough.

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After what many of the vault's residents considered to be the longest day in history, the entire population gathered in the common room to watch the votes being counted. She saw Mr. Brotch and Gomez at the table, and smiled when she thought that one of them might be counting her vote. Glancing around the room, she saw Christine Kendall leaning against the room's back wall. Walking over, she waited for a tirade of anger from her, but it never came. After a few moments of silence, she decided to try talking to the usually-bitchy woman.

"So.... how are things going?"

Christine didn't even look at Amata. She just stared off into space with an emotionless expression on her face. "Oh, just great. After my father, mother, and sister all died from radroaches a few days ago, I've been just peachy."

"Uh.... sorry. But it's not Michael's fault, right?"

Her look didn't change a bit, and neither did the direction of her gaze. "No, it's Thomas's fault. That bastard turned off the fucking lights and practically led all the damn roaches out of the lower levels. Maybe I can blame James for running out, but I can't blame your boyfriend."

"Well.... you're okay right?"

"I guess. Just don't talk about it. So who're you hoping wins?"

"Anyone but my father."

After Amata's short statement, Stanley and the rest of the people counting the votes stood up. "Settle down. The tally is 36% for Alphonse, 32% for Alan Mack, 31% for chief Hannon, and 1% for Beatrice. Alphonse is the new overseer for the next three years."

Voices rang out around the room. Most were protesting Alphonse's election, but one stood out above the rest. Beatrice yelled "One percent? I demand a recount!"

Amata let herself slide along the wall down to the floor. The last thing she had wanted was for her father to become overseer again. _"If only Hannon or Mack hadn't run. Maybe that would have spread enough votes to one of them to win."_ Christine followed her to the ground, still staring off into space.

"That sucks. Think your dad'll let Michael back in?"

The idea of revealing the security tape to the entire vault went through Amata's head. She responded "Yes. I know he will."

After the uproar began to die down, Stanley again addressed the people. "This is the way voting works people. We will have another vote for overseer in three years. As for the councilors, the positions are filled by Amata Almodovar, Chip Taylor, and Edwin Brotch."

This announcement met with much less arguing and much more cheering than the first. As people crowded around the winners, Christine managed to get in one last statement before Amata was carried away.

"Good for you."

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Slowly stretching all the muscles that didn't hurt, Michael sat up partway before he felt a churning in his stomach that demanded his immediate attention. Pulling himself over to the nearest trash can, he let loose a stream of partially irradiated vomit before Leo could wake up.

Rubbing his eyes, he turned around to see Leo slowly rousing from the chair. He had no shirt on, and a large bandage was wrapped around his torso. "What happened to you?"

He smiled, pointing to the pistol at his side. "One of those crazy church guys stabbed me and tried to off you. But he didn't get to you before I put twelve rounds in 'em. Sorry to borrow your gun without asking, but there's no telling if another one of them is gonna try to finish the job. Don't worry about sleeping, I'll drop any of those bastards like flies."

Michael laughed for the first time in several days, which quickly produced more from his upset stomach. "Man, I hate radaway."

"Yeah, go's through everyone like a rampaging brahmin. You're lucky stuffs coming out that end instead of the other. Wasn't that way last time I got exposed."

"Don't talk about that, I'm sick enough as it is. Why the hell am I so shaky?" His hands were twitching back and forth, and it seemed difficult to concentrate.

"Uh.... the doc had to use a bunch of chems to keep your heart beating. Maybe you're going through some kinda withdrawal."

"Wait.... heart? You're not talking radaway are you?"

"No, actually the doc took the drugs I promised you and used some of them." He pointed over to the table where he'd set the desk drawer earlier.

"Wonderful." Michael crawled back into bed slowly, but as soon as his head got down to the pillow, he felt something strange under it. Pulling it out, he said "Great. Vomit, assassins, chems, and sleeping with a gun under my head. This little dash out of the vault is getting better and better. Can I assume this was your idea?"

"Nope. Lucas's. Thank him and Jericho for keeping the rest of the crazies off you."

"Jericho? Who's Jericho?"

"An asshole with a bad attitude and a love for murder. You're lucky he hates the church so much, or he definitely would've let them kill you. Now get back to sleep, it's probably going to be a long time before you can do anything about it."

Setting the pillow back in place, he made one last comment before sleep stole him away again.

"How am I supposed to sleep knowing that my only guard is sleeping too?"

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Some crazy stuff is going on in the small town of Megaton. A little screw-up on Michael's part means he might never get back off that hospital bed. Even if he does, how long will it take for the church to sanction similar acts against the lone wanderer? Or will those chems seriously f*** him up? And how will things go in the vault now that Alphonse has officially been freed from jail? Will anyone actually vote him in as the new overseer? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!

Again, all credit for radiation poisoning info and such goes out to Omega Gilgamesh. I also pulled some of the extra medical data, most notably the possible 'good' use of amphetamine derivatives, from an off-net friend named Larry H. Many thanks for all the help, I appreciate all the ideas.


	10. Power Changes Hands

The lone wanderer hasn't been doing well. Radiation, assassins, and using jet to stay alive. Things have been going a little better in the vault, as the people of his former home have decided to start a democracy.... of sorts. Alphonse's scrambling back into the overseer's seat, but all Amata really wants is for Michael to be able to get back in. Will Michael live long enough to get back on his feet? How will the elections go in the vault?

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Chapter 10 – Power Changes Hands

Another day passed, and the final round of deliberations within the vault started. With everyone gathering once more in the common room, Amata made her way up to the table at the front of the room and sat down in the provided seat. A member of the council. A few days ago the idea would have been ludicrous, but Susie had convinced her to run, and she had actually won the most votes of anyone in the entire vault. Last night, she actually caught herself wondering if she should've ran for overseer instead, but the past was the past. Besides, she had plenty of control now. With Mr. Brotch and Chip Taylor as the other two on the council, she was sure that they would be able to block any harsh action on the part of her newly elected father..... not that she was worried about anything.

As Alphonse arrived and sat down, she leaned over and whispered "Remember our deal. Michael gets to come back, and you don't get exposed as a liar."

He turned toward his daughter. Before he could open his mouth she said "Don't even say anything; I don't care. You will let him in."

Without another word, he turned back toward the front of the room and began to address the crowd. "As you are all aware, we now have a new government in place, with myself as the overseer and the three seated next to me as councilors. The only object that we have left to discuss is the opening or closing of the vault. Would anyone like to speak on the possible options?"

With lightning-like reflexes, Susie bolted out of her seat and raised her hand. Remembering the girl's earlier promise, Amata quickly called on her before the others at the table could respond. Though a bit worried about her friend's lack of speaking skills, it was nice to know she cared.

"Well, right now we're going through a difficult time. I think that the benefits outweigh the rather minimal risks that could come from opening up the door somewhat, but I think we should wait a while first. Closing up the vault for like a month or two would be in our best interests. Repair the damage, fix up our problems, that sort of thing. Then we can start concentrating on the issue of the world outside. But between now and then, we gotta remember that Michael is still out there, and so's James. I'm kinda pissed at him, but not his son. We should let him back in if he manages to survive."

Amata thought to herself "_Not exactly the answer I wanted, but I'll take it Susie._" Alphonse was quick to counter the girl's statement. "Do you have a reason, or do you simply think that we should let him back in because you're enamored by Michael?"

Mr. Brotch cut him off. "Alphonse, you are out of line. If you want to pursue the emotional pathway, then you should think about how many people in this vault consider Michael to be a friend. As well, what is your reason for keeping him out, regardless of whether or not we reseal the vault?"

With one hand on her father's shoulder, Amata stopped Alphonse before he could continue. "I think Alphonse got a little ahead of himself. Don't you support letting Michael back in, even if we choose to seal the vault?" She flashed a smile toward her father, knowing that the nonverbal communication was more than enough to give him a message.

With a slight grimace, he said "Well.... I do support the closing of the vault, but I am ambiguous as far as whether or not to let a single individual back inside. I suppose it would be nice to perform so kind of trial should the boy or his father return."

Before he could continue, Christine put her hand up. Mr. Brotch pointed toward her, and she stood up from her seat. "A few nights back we all went through a tragedy. You all might be mad, especially those who lost someone, but I doubt you have it worse than me. I lost my father, my mother, and my little sister. My whole family is gone. But how in the hell can I blame James or Michael? Overseer Thomas turned off the main lights, that's what drew out all the roaches that killed them. He's also the one who had been scaling back the extermination patrols in all the unoccupied lower levels. His orders are responsible for the deaths of my family, not Michael or James."

"Maybe I can blame James for leaving, but a lot of you were ready to kill Michael just because James was his father. He had to leave, we can only blame James for breaking any laws. If Michael comes back, with or without his father, I have no problem letting him in. And if he has his father, how can any of you keep him out? Like the overseer said, we should want some kind of trial or retribution, even if it's just for leaving without our consent. No matter how you want to punish him, it doesn't matter. If you just want to banish the doctor afterwards, fine by me."

Christine had been so silent since she lost her family that the sudden speech shocked the entire room. It was several seconds before anyone could respond. The third councilor, Chip Taylor, managed to come up with a few sentences. "A good point. I must agree with you. Before we vote on opening the vault as a whole, perhaps we should take a tally of those who agree on just letting those two return."

"What's the point? Such policy decisions can be made by a unanimous vote of the council and the approval of the overseer. Has no one else read the specifics of our new government?"

Alphonse may not have been trying to insult anyone, but a few people were taken aback by his statement. "The government states that citizens may be pardoned outside of a trial by a unanimous vote of the council and approval of the overseer. If he has committed no crime, then we have no reason to keep him out."

Chip Taylor cut him off. "This situation is too important for only us to decide, that's why this meeting's been called. Even if he is not guilty, which most of us already agree on, that doesn't mean he gets a free pass back in here. We will vote on this now."

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"He must be punished!"

"Yes, but we can do nothing now. The heathens guard him day and night, and they all possess firearms. We have only one alongside our other weapons. Atom will provide the faithful with victory, but we must be patient for the right time."

The followers of the Church of Atom were busy plotting how best to exact their vengeance. Inside the town's church, nearly a dozen of the members were going over various ways to get to Michael. So far they had come up with nothing. Doc church was with him for most of the day, and Lucas and Leo guarded him whenever he had to leave, be it for food, sleep, or just a drink in Moriarty's. Jenny had even taken a turn, despite Leo's protests that he could stay up all night. Several nights had passed since Sid had attempted to take Michael's life, and it did not look as though either side was going to give up soon.

"We can go right now! There are more of us than the unfaithful, we will succeed!"

"Yes, but many of us would die in the process. Atom demands retribution, but he does not demand that we undertake such foolish action simply so his vengeance comes sooner. Patience my flock, soon we shall sacrifice the one responsible upon the altar of Atom, and his blood shall purify the taint that he left upon our town."

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During the church's meeting, the people of vault 101 finally finished their tally. After counting the votes, the votes for letting Michael and the doctor back into the vault exceeded the nays at about a 60/40 split. Amata did her best to conceal her joy, but it was obvious to most of those in the room. With happiness covering her face, she addressed the crowd. "All right then, looks like Michael will be coming back."

"If he survives long enough to make it back. And that's assuming he even wants to reenter the vault. Who knows, perhaps a violent boy such as Michael likes living such a wild life."

Amata turned her eyes toward her father, her happy expression dissolving into one of anger. "I suppose we'll see. Now, let's turn our attention toward the idea of opening the vault in general."

Stanley was one of the ones who put his hand up, and due to his age and experience, he was a logical choice to be called on first. "I've been working sixteen hour days trying to keep this vault going, and most of the technicians can say the same. We've been jury-rigging a lot of systems for years, and a few for decades. Like it or not, stuff's not gonna last forever in here, and if we plan on not being forced outside, we've gotta keep things going. Resealing completely? No. But moving a lot of people out of here? Also a bad idea. A few people along with the data gathered years ago is what I say. Send a couple volunteers to contact that nearby town, maybe try to find another vault, that's all we should do."

Ellen DeLoria, mother to Butch and the vault's alcoholic, decided to speak next. "We've got radroaches the size of cats getting in here, and the old exploration team saw ants the size of dogs. Maybe a few pistols are enough to drive them off, but what the hell happened to other animals? Maybe some cats became a new species of radioactive tigers. You can talk around about no danger all you want, but all our people did decades ago was walk a few miles and hang around in that little town. And the folks in that town talked all about human raiders and slavers and even cannibals. They even said there were irradiated 'ghouls' who attack anything that moves."

"You want to get stuff for the vault? The first ones didn't get anything. If round two is going to be any better, then they're gonna have to explore farther. What the hell is going to happen to them if they do, especially if all they got are pistols and vests? How are they gonna survive out there? I sure as hell ain't going out, and you're stupid if you want to go."

Murmurs went through the room after the woman's speech, and Amata was hard pressed to argue, even though most of her reasons were supposition. Mr. Brotch decided that it was enough. "Unless anyone has different reasons other than those presented today or at the previous meetings, further discussion is pointless. Again, show us some different reasons people. Does anyone have anything?"

With silence filling the room, he said "Very well. We can now vote on this issue, but let's remember that future meetings can be called to reverse this decision, no matter which way it goes today."

The officials again passed ballots out, anticipating another close vote. Ten minutes later, the same result as the decision on James and Michael came forth, but on the opposite side of what Amata was hoping for. Though again the majority was slim, it was clear that the vault would not be opened, at least for the near future. Chip Taylor stood up. "Very well. The vault will remain sealed for the time being. Should the issue be raised by a significant number of people at the council's next general meeting, we will consider it again. For now, this meeting is adjourned."

With most people in the room distracted by the results of the day's votes, Amata was able to quietly slip into the hallway without anyone noticing. Though she didn't like the result, at least Michael would get an opportunity to come back, and maybe the residents would change their minds in the future. For now, there was nothing that could be done until another general meeting was called. "_Here's to yet another day underground._"

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A growl sounded somewhere in the room. Then another, and then another. Though such a quiet noise wouldn't wake most people, it was coming straight from Michael's torso, which amplified the sound for him. An empty stomach beckoned his body, despite its tired protests, to drag himself to the nearest plate of food. Before he could get to his clothes, doc Church came out of the clinic's back room.

"Get back in bed. Just because you're alive and at zero rads doesn't mean you're ready to leave."

"I'm just hungry. I'll be back in a few."

"Fine. But if you collapse from exhaustion, someone else is bringing you back in here."

A weak smile on his face, he watched the doc walk into the back room. After pulling on his clothes, he noticed the drawer on the table. It was filled with enough chems to get a dinosaur high. It had to be the drug stash that Leo had promised him earlier as a reward.

"Hey doc, are those Leo's drugs?"

The doc yelled back into the room. "Yeah, he said he promised them to you. Pack 'em if you want 'em, but you should know...."

"He told me earlier. You dosed me for a long while to keep me alive. No problems from me, it's what I would've told you to do if I was conscious."

"Let me finish. The doses of buffout were spaced enough to be safe, but you're definitely addicted to jet. I can give you a few medicines to cut down the withdrawal, but it'll still take a few weeks."

"Later, I'm really hungry right now. Don't even tell me how many caps you charge for that."

He slowly walked out of the door and across the street, much to the amazement of the townspeople that were present. Though far from all of the residents had seen Michael disarm the bomb, word spread rather quickly, as well as news of the assassination attempt. For a man with such severe radiation poisoning to be up so soon was quite an unusual sight. After he managed to get to a seat at the Brass Lantern without falling down, he looked up to find Jenny at the counter, still smiling the same as the day he'd come into town.

"Don't suppose you've got something light, my stomach is not going to take any meat today."

"How about a few mutfruit and some noodles?"

"I have absolutely no idea what a mutfruit is, but I'll take it. How much?"

"For you? On the house."

He frowned slightly, taking in the scene. Maybe she was being nice, but he didn't like the idea of being indebted to her. Pulling the small bag with his remaining caps from his pocket, he attempted to dissuade her.

"No, I can't do that to you. Does that run around ten caps or what?"

She took the whole bag from him and dangled it in front of his face. "You cure my junkie brother and disarm the nuclear bomb I've been living fifty feet from my whole life. I don't exactly know how to reward something like that, but the least I can do is a free meal, especially when your caps are this light."

Another resident sitting down the bar decided to put in his idea. "You don't know how to reward him? You're a girl and he's a guy. God, you are a stupid tease."

"Fuck off Jericho. Don't know why I take your caps, it's not enough pay to be around you."

The name Jericho stuck in his mind for a few seconds before he remembered his earlier conversation with Leo. "You're Jericho? Leo says I owe you for dealing with the church a while back."

"Wasn't kindness kid. Those bastards drive me crazy, and I got a free chance to knock Cromwell upside the head because of you. Good timing for you."

"You actually hit him?"

The old raider smiled. "Yeah, it was nice. Guy turned around and I bashed him on the head with my assault rifle. Crazies already hated me, it was worth it."

"Even if you did it just for you, let me give you a few caps. Have a drink on me some time." Michael slipped Jericho about ten caps.

"This it? Kid, I drink vodka, not beer."

"Uh.... sorry. I don't really have too many caps left."

"Whatever. Get a few shots out of this much anyway. If you need more caps, try attacking the raider camp a mile or so north-east of here. They're bound to have some good loot, and if they don't, their weapons will sell anyway."

The advice quickly caught the wanderer's attention. "A raider camp? That close to the city?"

When Jericho didn't respond to the question, Jenny decided to reenter the conversation. "The ruins of Springvale have an old school. It's falling apart, but at least a half-dozen raiders are holed up in there. Don't know why they're still there; as soon as they started raiding caravans, the merchants just changed their route to avoid them. Raiders just sitting in some ruins is kinda weird."

"Probably having some kind of clusterfuck orgy or something."

Both Jenny and Michael turned back toward Jericho. Though he didn't have any idea how to respond to such a statement, she had something to say. "Jericho, why the hell do you always come up with useless shit like that? You finished that meat five minutes ago, if you don't want seconds get lost."

With a smirk on his face, he sat up and walked away from the outside bar, but not before he said "Maybe we'll have some fun later gorgeous." A minute of silence accompanied the remaining two as he munched on noodles while she just stood there.

"Do you think he'd work with me if I cut him in on the loot?"

"Are you serious?"

Michael didn't have a single bit of humor flowing through him. "Yeah, plenty serious. If there's stuff to be had and raiders to dispatch, it sounds like a good idea. But I'm one guy, some backup from a veteran would be a requirement."

She didn't need to think before responding. "Once a raider, always a raider. Two things'll happen. He'll kill you as soon as you get clear of the city and loot your corpse, or he'll wait until the two of you empty out the school and kill you then for the extra loot."

He thought about it for a moment. "He's obviously an asshole and all, but what makes you think he's not open to a little business? He can't be that much of a double-crossing douche."

She gazed at him fiercely for a moment, letting anger flow before her face melted into one of sorrow. "Please don't hang around with him. He's bad, and he's done bad things, even after he came into Megaton. Just don't, okay?"

The look was strange at best for the naive boy. "What, did he do something to you?"

She turned away. "He did some shit a while back. Just forget it."

"What?"

"I said forget it!" She walked inside the bar, leaving a confused Michael with half a plate of noodles and some mutfruit. After a minute, Andy came outside to watch the bar, and he was pissed.

"What the hell'd you do to my sister?"

"Nothing! I was talking to her, and she got all pissed when I started talking about that Jericho guy. I asked her a few things about him and she flipped out on me."

Though his anger appeared to have subsided somewhat, Andy continued his tirade.

"You must've done something; nobody cries like that for no reason."

"Cries? What did I say wrong?" The confused wanderer attempted to get up and walk into the restaurant, but his lack of strength was not enough to get him to the door, to say nothing of getting past Andy.

"Just get back to the clinic. I'll tell her you didn't mean anything, even though I have no fucking clue what's up with you two. If you're still feeling good, come back tomorrow for lunch and try apologizing then."

Nodding his head, Michael grabbed his last mutfruit and chewed it slowly as he walked back to the clinic at approximately one mile an hour. Feeling a wave of dizziness after he opened the door, he nearly fell to the floor before catching himself on the edge of a nearby table. The doc came into the front entrance.

"For Christ's sake, why can't you just sit in bed? Don't you have any of that vault food left in your pack?"

Settling back onto the hospital bed with his hands shaking, he only said "I'm sick as hell, and I'm feeling a lot of it in my stomach. I'm not eating dehydrated paste when there's fresh stuff across the street."

A 'humph' from the doctor being the only response, he checked the weapon under his pillow and asked one final question.

"What's up with Jericho and Jenny Stahl?"

"Didn't know they had a problem. My guess would be Jenny's probably just pissed at him for being the typical male raider bastard. A grope here, a sex comment there. He does that to most of the women in town, when their brothers or fathers ain't looking anyway. Girl's probably just more sensitive about that stuff than others."

"Great. I wasn't just saved by a raider, but a pervert too." He was starting to feel even worse, and he wasn't sure if it was the situation or the fact that the doc had force fed him chems for so long. Waiting a minute until Church went into the back room, he snuck over to the drawer containing the drugs and pulled out a canister of jet.

"_One hit. Just to take the edge off. I've got willpower, I'll just slowly wean myself off this stuff._"

After a moment's hesitation, he brought the cartridge up to his lips and slowly took a deep hit. Feeling a rush course through his veins, it took serious thought before he set the cartridge back into the drawer.

"_That's all. Just one. Just to help me rest. I did it._"

Smiling, he went over to the bed and put his head on the pillow, feeling wonderful about his life for some strange reason.

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After some time, Michael rose once again from the hospital bed, this time feeling much better. Slowly stretching, he put himself on the floor and started to do a few push ups. Difficult, but that was to be expected after at least a week in bed. He was proud that most of his muscle had survived with him. The fact that he had no aches or pains was enough of a sign. He felt a little light-headed, but he figured it was just the jet. He walked over to the corner of the room and began to hoist his gear back onto him. Once again, doc Church tried to stop him, but his efforts were in vain.

"Can't you sit still for five seconds?"

"I feel a lot better, consider me an out-patient from now on. I'll be back if I feel a relapse, okay?"

"Whatever. You fall down in the streets, you better hope one of your fans gets to you before the church does."

"Oh, thanks. That's a lot of encouragement." He moved over to the table where Leo had set the drawer of drugs and started to empty its contents into his bag. Looking at the container he had taken a hit from earlier, he waited until the doctor turned around and took a quick breath out of the inhaler. He slipped the partially used cartridge into the inside pocket of his jumpsuit and hoisted his backpack, full of enough drugs to last him a month, back onto his shoulders.

As he turned to leave, the issue of paying for his treatments came back to mind. "You said Lucas and Moira paid you?"

"Yeah. A hundred from him, and a hundred eighty from her. Better give her a thank you card or something."

Once again finding the man's sarcasm pleasantly annoying, he walked out of the clinic. Though he wasn't hungry, the first place on his list was the Brass Lantern. Jenny was outside, but she started for the door as soon as he came over.

"Wait! I'm sorry! What did I do?"

She turned back, not moving toward the bar or the door. "Nothing."

"Well then how am I supposed to apologize if I did nothing?"

She walked back to her post. "I hate Jericho, that's all. Just forget it."

Realizing that he was going to get nothing else, he nodded and said "Okay. I'll be back for some lunch later, mind saving me a seat?"

A small smile began to creep out of her. "Yeah, I'll save you a seat. Not like they all ever get filled up."

"Then save two. One at the end for Jericho, and one at the other end for me. You and me can hang at one end and ignore him, okay?"

The smile on her face got a little wider. "Not like they're really that far apart. Still a good idea though. Maybe I'll do that."

Once again tipping the invisible cowboy hat he didn't have, he walked away and turned toward Craterside Supply. "_Just apologizing, that's all. Just being nice. I was nice to Leo too, and he's a dude._" Amata's image still at the forefront of his mind, he stopped before he got to the store, stripped his backpack off, and sat down with his back against the side of Moira's.

Memories started to flow through his mind. The times they had spent playing together as kids. Kissing her for the first (and a long while only) time at that party. Beating up Butch when his little gang was harassing Amata. That same night where they had been together for the first time. And every day since then, all three years between that night and his forced exit from the vault.

He felt his eyes water, but was able to keep tears away for the moment. He stared down at the rusty metal platform holding up him and the store against the side of the crater. "_I'm alive. She's dead. That's the whole story._" He had no idea how long he sat there, tossing the statements over and over through his mind, before Sheriff Simms found him.

"Had me a little worried when I came by Church's clinic. Checking out with no one around like that, figured crazies carried you off by now."

Pulling back his feelings as far as he could, he spoke carefully, not looking directly at Lucas. "I needed a little walk. I have to head out after my dad as soon as possible anyway, so a little exercise is an order, don't you think?"

"Don't bother hiding it from me, I know it when I see it. What's wrong?"

The words surprised Michael a bit. The man had soul vision apparently.

"I lost someone close to me back in the vault. Part of why I was so willing to leave, I guess. I'm not tracking down my dad to get back in anymore, I gotta say the air and sun alone is worth living a rough life out here. But I have to catch his ass and drag him to the vault. He's got explaining to do. Especially since it's half his fault Amata's dead."

"Her name was Amata? Who was she?"

Despite his attempts to hide it, he'd failed. "_Just gotta keep blabbing like a little bitch._" Talking about her always made him feel worse. "The woman I loved."

Once again time seemed to pass in unknown increments, except this time the sheriff was present. Since Michael had nothing left to say, it was no surprise that Lucas spoke next.

"Look, I promised you a reward for disarming...."

"Stop. I talked to Church already, you gave him my caps so I could get treated. The situation is unusual, but I was paid."

"Let me finish. A couple of things have occurred to me. A tough kid like you could do real good for this town. Leaving this place behind forever because of the church is pointless, because they've got members all over the wastes. And if you're not gonna try to go back to living in the vault, you need a place to stay."

The wanderer looked up at Lucas. "After I track down my dad, it is high on my list to find a new home. Are you officially welcoming a new resident to Megaton?"

"More than welcoming." Lucas pulled a key out of his pocket. "There's an empty house over there, see?" He pointed across the crater to a building further up the crater from the Brass Lantern.

"Wait a second. I'm happy to get some real estate, but you realized how much this is worth? You could sell that place for a hell of a lot of caps."

The old sheriff smiled. "Then let's trade. You disarmed the bomb and I gave you a hundred caps for it. The next logical thing is the core, even though you said you couldn't figure out how to move it. You keep an eye out for how to do that, then when you see a way, come back and do it. I pay you in advance with the house, how about that?"

A smile spread across Michael's face. "Okay, but either a giant robot or a team of ghouls is all I can think of straight away." He stopped for a moment. "Wait.... how strong is Gob? Never mind, not strong enough. But if he could do a few little things first.... and we got a sled or something.... yeah."

"Yeah what? What are you thinking kid?"

"Sheriff, find a half-dozen people who are heavily armed and willing to piss off the church to get that core out of town. Do you know where we can get a bunch of rope and a big flat piece of metal?"

"Uh.... we're standing right next to Moira's. But why the hell do you need all that?"

"Just find some people who're willing to trade an hour of work for a lifetime without radiation."

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Surprise would be an understatement. Moira had been working on another one of her experiments when Michael had almost busted down the door to her store. She had expected him to stay in bed for at least a few more days, seeing him up and excited was a nice relief.

"You're okay! What's going on? Are you feeling okay? I have something to tell you about my anti-radiation medicines..."

"I already know, they were either not effective or not effective enough. I also know I owe you a hundred and eighty caps, but I need a bunch of rope and a big piece of metal before I can start paying you back."

"Metal? Rope? Look, I nearly got you killed, don't worry about those caps. I need to talk to you about your DNA."

"I'm not.... DNA? What's wrong with it?"

"Well, I'm not sure if it was one of my compounds, or a combination of them, or the radiation, or maybe all of it, but I sorta twisted your genetic code."

One of the things they had always gone on and on about in the vault was the potential for radiation to create all sorts of rabid half-human monsters, and the news of ghouls and super mutants hadn't been very far off. He was not interested in finding out how they lived, or becoming his own third mutant race.

"Twisted my genes? What the hell happened to me?"

"I took a few genetic samples from you at the beginning of my treatments and at intervals during your recovery. The first problem....." Moira went on for several minutes, talking mumbo jumbo about all sorts of science and medical concepts. Even the extra medical training he'd absorbed from his father wasn't enough to keep up with her. Most of it flew far over his head, but one particular phrase stood out among the rest.

"Wait a second, radiation heals me? What the hell?"

"Sort of. Your limbs, and maybe other body parts, will be able to heal much more quickly when your body is irradiated to at least a moderate level. Enough radiation will still kill you.... at least probably."

"Probably?"

"It's really weird. Reminds me of some of the things I've heard about ghouls, so maybe the same thing's happening to you."

Michael grabbed Moira by her shoulders and put his face an inch from hers. "I'M TURNING INTO A GHOUL!?"

Her happy expression disappeared. "No no no! I just said it was like ghouls. All I'm sure about is that your limbs will definitely regenerate when your body is exposed to significant amounts of radiation. I'm not even sure about the rest of your body healing. I'm also pretty sure you're not going to suffer nearly as much as ordinary humans from lower doses of radiation. I'm positive it's non-progressive, so don't worry about any future changes."

"You're positive? That isn't exactly enough to calm me. Is there anyone in the wasteland that knows more about ghouls and genetics than you?"

"The Rivet City science labs I guess. Or maybe that doctor over at Tenpenny tower, I heard they have problems with ghouls. Or maybe some of those ghouls in the downtown ruins have studied their own genes. Or maybe...."

He turned his face away from Moira for a moment. A ghoul? Even if the odds were one in a thousand, it was too high. Her babbling wasn't helping much, except for making him feel worse. "_If I'm going to go visit that Three Dog radio guy, he'd better know as much about ghouls as he does about my dad_."

"Whatever, just stop, I gotta go back to my first question. Lots of rope and a rectangular piece of metal, like a sled."

"First, look over there." On her counter was his spare jumpsuit, but a few things were different. An ammo bandoleer across the chest, a few plates of armor in strategic places, and she'd sewn Kevlar into the inside of the suit. It was definitely better than the suit he was wearing. He stripped off his other jumpsuit without any concern for Moira's presence and quickly donned the new combat-ready gear.

"I'm going to head out of town in a bit, but when I get back, I'll help you with more experiments, okay? As long as they have nothing to do with radiation."

After a short laugh, she turned around and retrieved the items Michael had requested. After looking over the room, he finally found a piece in the back of her shop that would do.

"Moira, here's the plan. I need you to....."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Being a virtual slave to Moriarty meant that Gob had almost no chance to leave his post, but enough rumor had gotten around the town that he knew what had been happening outside. Seeing the wanderer in the saloon so soon was unexpected, given that normal humans were hurt a lot by radiation in comparison to his kind, who loved the stuff. Without wasting a moment, Michael walked right up to the counter.

"Gob, I need your help. Exactly how resistant are ghouls to radiation? Is there a limit?"

"None I've run into yet smoothskin. Why?"

"Smoothskin.... oh, I get it. What I need you to to do is screw around with the bomb in the center of town for a little while."

"You just want me to screw around, or do something specific?"

"You're gonna save the town. Now hurry up."

Of course, Moriarty appeared out of his office just as Gob was about to leave. "Get back to work, you rotting piece of shit."

"Moriarty, I need Gob for a while. Let him help me, and the two of us will be doing this whole town, including you, a huge favor."

Not waiting for approval, Michael grabbed Gob by a half-rotten arm and pulled him out of the bar.

----------------------------------------------------------------

It was a strange sight at best. Moira dragging a large hunk of metal and a coil of rope big enough to create a tightrope across the crater. Lucas standing in front of the Brass Lantern with seven other people, all armed for war. Gob being pulled out of the bar by the lone wanderer. All were things you didn't see every day, but when they all met at the center of town, it was a sight to behold. Leo, the first to be recruited by Lucas, was also the first to voice his objections to the ghoul's presence.

"What the hell's the zombie doing here?"

Michael turned toward him. "He's helping us, cut the zombie crap. Now everyone listen."

The wanderer went through the plan slowly. Gob would use Michael's welder to open a hole in the bottom of the bomb while the rest of them carefully bent the metal sheet and fit it through the hole. Gob would knock the core loose so the assembly would fall onto the sheet. Then, with multiple ropes tied to its edge, the group would pull the sheet out of town.

The former raider Jericho had come along, but how Lucas had convinced him was an unknown. The man simply had to ask the question "Then why the hell do we need guns for this shit?"

Rolling his eyes for effect, Michael said "One. The church is going to see us do this and then they'll get pissed. Two. A bunch of guys pulling a sled aren't hard targets to hit out in the wastes. I assume the only reason you're even helping is the first reason."

"Na, that fucking doc charges way too much to get rid of radiation. If a little pulling gets rid of that thing, then I'm saving a shitload of caps if I do this. Besides, none of you little pricks are nearly as strong as me."

With about a dozen loud retorts coming from the rest of the group, mostly "Fuck You!", Michael turned toward Gob. "This plan sucks without you, so expect to be town hero after this."

As the wanderer set down his bag and pulled out the tool satchel, Gob said "They'll still treat me like shit, but at least I can hang this over them. Definitely worth the time."

Handing over his fusion welder, he said "This thing's almost completely charged, so take your time. The opening doesn't need to be very big, just enough that the thing can drag out with the core on top. After the first hole, you'll have to use this to reopen the maintenance hatch and cut the core loose from the structure. Don't cut the core until we have the sled in there!"

Gob smiled, sending wrinkles across his necrotic flesh. "I may be rotting, but my brain's still intact."

-----------------------------------------------------------

After some creative bending that required the strength of all present, the metal at one end now looked like a makeshift basket, or at least a giant flat basket with sides a foot high and a back two feet high. Cutting and tying as needed, the group attached several lengths of rope to the other end of the sled and pushed it over to Gob. With perfect timing, the first cut fell open and Gob pushed it into the bomb casing.

The plan only had one hitch. Mere seconds after Gob had cut the lower opening and pushed the sled into the weapon, the confessor finally came out of his church, screaming and waving a sawed-off shotgun. "Heathens! Blasphemers! You have already soiled the altar of Atom, and now you would deface it? You shall all burn in his cleansing flame!"

"Would you shut the hell up?" Even Jericho was surprised by the wanderer's new attitude. "This thing is slowly poisoning everyone in town to death. Your religion isn't more important than a single person's life, to say nothing of a hundred. I swear I'm going to inflict serious pain on you if you try to stop us." A few members of the group voiced their agreement. Gob turned back around and brought the cutter to bear on the casing again, only to have two shotgun shells hit the bomb less than a foot from him.

The entire group brought their weapons around, but before their aims had come even close to their target, Michael had activated his V.A.T.S. His pistol drawn, he put a targeted shot into the preacher's right arm, instantly disarming him.

The man should have considered himself lucky, as the rest of the crowd would have likely put more than one round in the preacher. His screams quickly alerted the rest of his flock, and within minutes the entire membership of the church had gathered around their leader. The lone wanderer quickly holstered his pistol and brought his submachine gun off the side of his pack. Holding it at his hip, he waited with the rest of his group to see what would happen.

Amazingly, there were no calls for blood, no yells about Atom or his vengeance. As several members carried Cromwell to the clinic, the rest only gathered a short distance away and whispered among themselves. After a minute they backed off even further, still watching the procedure from a distance.

Michael walked over to the bomb, careful to keep enough distance to avoid any significant radiation. "You all right?"

The ghoul turned around, an angry expression on his face. "Oh yeah, great. That fucking crazy guy almost killed me, and I think a few pellets ricocheted and hit my arm. Not that I can feel my skin anyway, it'd have to go deep to hurt."

After Michael turned away and joined the rest of the group, Gob turned around and continued his work. The maintenance hatch, having only been partially re-welded to keep it in place, only took another minute to remove. As Gob began to cut through the core's supports, Michael elbowed Leo.

"You gonna call him a zombie after this, or are you gonna show some respect?"

The recovering addict stared at the ground without moving. "Why does that bug you so much?"

"He may not win a beauty contest, but what else could you hate him for?"

"Well.... I.... You know...."

"Actually I don't know. Why should I hate ghouls?"

Whether or not Leo had an intelligent response, it would have to wait. With a crunch and thud, the radioactive mass broke free and fell to the bottom of the two hundred year old weapon, landing perfectly on the sheet of metal.

"Please tell me that it didn't break through."

Gob leaned inside the hole for a minute. "Nope, Santa's sleigh is ready to deliver a radioactive present to someone who's been good this year."

"Then let's do some pulling." A few grunts later, they had the core out of the weapon and all the way to the side of the crater. "Gob, will it hold?"

"Geez, could you give me five seconds?" The ghoul walked over to the makeshift nuclear transport and, after a moment of silence, kicked it. "Yeah, pull it already. Can I go now?"

"No, I think I might still need you. Just follow us for a little, okay? You don't even have to pull."

Working together, the team managed to get the sled up the steep hill, although they nearly lost it when one of the ropes broke. After getting through the town's gates, they stopped for a moment to rest. Jericho, always the helpful one, decided to say "What now genius?"

"Actually, I didn't plan this far ahead." He looked around the area for a minute. "_Springvale might be a good option, but where exactly?_" Surveying the town, the Red Rocket fuel station caught his eye.

"If you really want to be radiation free, we've got to pull it to the Red Rocket over there."

After a few moans and groans about the distance, Lucas yelled "You want to avoid growing a second ass or not?" It was enough to get everyone back to the ropes, and after fifteen minutes they had arrived at their destination.

Leo, panting from the unusual amount of activity, said "Why the hell did we drag this here? We coulda just dumped it in that old tub fifty feet from the gate and put some dirt on it."

The wanderer wandered around the station for a moment, checking the geiger counter on his pip-boy. No ambient radiation at all. "The reason we dragged it out here is because these stations worked on servicing nuclear-powered vehicles. There's a small waste repository for holding spent fuel until special trucks picked it up. And it's.... right here." He pointed to a small cover on the ground.

"Gob, all you gotta do is rotate those four bolts and pick up the cover. Roll the mass into the hole, cover it back up, and relock the bolts."

"Geez, fine. You're almost as bad as Moriarty. What makes you think this thing'll block the radiation anyway?"

He pointed to his arm. "Because none's leaking now." After handing his tools to Gob, he stepped back and grabbed one of the ropes. "Gob's not a bodybuilder, drag the thing as close as we can."

As soon as the ghoul undid the cover, Michael took a look at his pip-boy. It wasn't much, but there was definitely radiation coming from the hole. "_It contained some spent rods for two hundred years. But three hundred pounds of weapons-grade nuclear material? Who knows._" "Everyone take a few steps back, even from here we're getting some radiation."

After a minute of groaning, Gob tipped over the makeshift sled and let the ball of pure nuclear material roll into the hole. With a sickening _crunch_, the mass fell to the bottom of the hole and crushed several of the two hundred year old fuel rods. "I really hope that didn't crack the bottom of the casing."

Gob replaced the cover and bolts quickly, and as he got up he mumbled "Damn smoothskins, making the ghouls do all the work...."

The group walked back to town slowly, everyone congratulating each other on a job well done. Even Leo decided to get over some of his prejudice. "Well, I gotta say it Gob, you really came through on this one. I'll try not to hate you in the future."

"A little gratitude from a ghoul-hater? Any of the rest of you bigots want to take a page from this guy?"

----------------------------------------------------------

After returning to town, the heroes weren't greeted by a ticker tape parade. Instead, as soon as the gates opened they were greeted by every member of the Church of Atom in the town, minus the confessor of course. One other member completed their side, and it was Jenny Stahl.

With every man in the group raising their weapons instantly, Maya stepped out from behind Jenny, holding the Chinese pistol that had once been the property of the barmaid. "You soiled the Altar! Attacked a holy man without cause! You should all die, and this woman as well, but Atom will spare you all, in exchange for the life of the one who caused these events to pass."

"Without cause? Are you fucking stupid? For fuck's sake, that asshole tried to shoot Gob. I ain't no zombie lover, but you guys can't pull that shit."

Michael turned to Jericho momentarily. "You're not helping. Let me do the talking." He stripped his pack and weapons from his body, then handed them to the sheriff. Quietly whispering, he said "Don't worry. I've got a bad idea."

Lucas tried to stop him. "There's no way I'm letting you do this."

He only smiled. "I said I had a bad idea. If things go wrong, and I'm 99% sure they won't, just kill them all after they kill me."

With his hands up, Michael slowly bridged the distance between the two lines. As soon as he was next to Maya, he said "Okay, let her go now."

Nodding, the older woman shoved Jenny forward. She ran over to the sheriff and, to the surprise of both groups, decided to borrow the MP9 that Michael had dropped a moment earlier. "If you kill him, I'm personally sending all of you to meet Atom."

Slightly unnerved by the woman's statement, the church members began to pull away slightly, leaving Maya and Michael momentarily exposed. With a quick flick of his wrist, his V.A.T.S. came online. Grabbing the pistol and quickly punching the woman in the throat, he was halfway to the friendly line, Chinese pistol in hand, before the safeties disengaged his accelerated reflexes.

A louder din couldn't have been made, even if the town's nuclear bomb had been detonated. Half of those present were cheering and the other half were picking up Maya while chanting their desire for vengeance. Quickly exchanging weapons with Jenny and retrieving his gear, he turned back toward the church and walked a few steps out.

"It ends now. After today, no more of this shit. Anyone wanna step up to the plate?"

He'd hoped that the simple intimidation would stop the crowd, but one member of the group had enough confidence to face him. A man, unknown to Michael by name, stepped to the front of the crowd with the confessor's shotgun. "Are you ready for the wrath of Atom?"

For a few moments no one said anything. The wanderer had his weapon raised, trigger pulled halfway back, the iron sights of his submachine gun lined up with the man's torso. His fellow duelist had the shotgun pointed directly at his head. "_He's a good ten feet away. Maybe the shells will spread a little._"

An audible _click_ went off from the man's shotgun, and it was all he needed. Depressing the trigger another quarter-inch, he let a dozen 10mm rounds fly into his opponent. The man flew a foot back and hit the ground, his limbs twitching slightly. The church scattered, with some of them dodging and weaving as if they were the next targets.

Michael let the weapon fall to his side. Killing the officers in the vault, that had been different. They had killed innocent people right in front of him and they didn't even care. This man may have been part of holding Jenny hostage, but that was it. It wasn't even his gun, it was the confessor's. Back in the vault he had been so angry. Now, he wasn't sure what he was feeling. It definitely wasn't anger.... he had no idea what this was.

Jericho walked over to the corpse and examined the weapon. Opening the stock, he pulled out the shells... or rather the shell cases. "Motherfucker didn't even reload it after the preacher shot at Gob. Both barrels carrying spent shells! What a dumbass!" The former raider started laughing uncontrollably.

Michael's legs wouldn't hold him. He fell to his knees, staring at the corpse. His hands were starting to shake, and he wasn't sure if he needed another jet hit or he was having a seizure. The man was dead, and the only place blame could fall was on him. "_I killed him. In cold blood. What if I had used my VATS? I stopped Cromwell without killing him. No, it wasn't ready after dealing with Maya. But.... he was unarmed. But not really. But technically he had nothing.... I might as well have executed him...._"

He nearly jumped when Jenny put her hand on his shoulder. Either she was a mind reader or the situation was obvious. "He had a gun, you had a gun. It doesn't matter that his was empty."

Getting back to his feet, he walked over to the corpse and knelt down. He stared at the dead man's face for a few moments. "Jericho, give me that fucking gun."

"What?"

"He pointed it at me. I killed him. It's mine."

After glancing around for a moment, he grumbled and handed the weapon, barrel-first, to Michael. The wanderer searched the man's corpse, finding nothing of value but a few caps.

"Looting the dead?"

He turned around to face Jericho. "If he doesn't like it, he'll complain." The wanderer grabbed the corpse by the arms and began to drag it toward the city gates. "I'll be back to deal with Cromwell in a second, but I guess if I get to loot him, I've got to deal with the body."

"Just dump his stiff ass fifty feet from the gate. Not like anyone out there cares."

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Cromwell was still lying in the bed in Church's clinic when Michael came through the door. His wife Maya was in a chair, still coughing from the hit he'd delivered. The preacher tried to get up, but Michael put his hand on the man's chest and pushed him back down.

"Where's the shells for my new toy?"

When the man didn't respond, Michael patted down his pockets, still holding the confessor down with his other hand. After a moment, one of the man's pockets yielded eight unspent shells for Michael's efforts. Lucas, who had followed Michael into the clinic, decided to criticize the newly emboldened wanderer.

"That's called stealing you know. I'm still the sheriff."

"Fine. Call a court so I can sue his ass for emotional pain and whatnot. These shells should cover the damages he owes me. Besides, it's not like he can use them anymore." Breaking the shotgun open in front of all present, he put two fresh shells into the chambers and snapped it shut. "I'm hungry, how about you Sheriff?"

--------------------------------------------------------

A minute later the wanderer and Lucas joined the small group outside. With nothing but silence from the assembled mass, he walked up to Leo. "After all this shit, I want you to hold onto that 10mm you've been borrowing."

"Are you fucking kidding? This is worth a bunch of caps." He tried to hand back the borrowed weapon, but Michael shoved it back into Leo's chest.

"Either you take it or I give it to your sister, and then she has two guns, one of which she'll eventually give you. After those crazies pulled that stunt, I'm not going to leave town and worry about you and your family all day long. Just promise me you won't shoot Gob for being a ghoul."

A chuckle ran through the crowd, with the still-present Gob saying "Fucking wonderful! Give him a gun. Moriarty's probably gonna try to kill me for being gone so long."

He smiled and turned back to Leo. "I can't hold onto it, my second holster's gonna be filled by this baby." He tapped the sawed-off weapon lightly and tried to fit it into the holster on his left hip. After a moment, he gave up and unslung his pack, placing the weapon inside. "Looks like I've got an arts n' crafts project tonight."

The former addict finally put away the weapon he'd gotten from the newly-developed addict, and afterwards the newer jet-head turned to address the crowd. "Wish I could pay you guys for backing me up, but all that dead guy had was about ten caps." Besides a grumble from Jericho along the lines of "You could let me have that shotgun", the people present all voiced different statements about how they'd already been paid. The town was free of radioactive material, which meant that the half-broken water processing plant would yield cleaner water. Also, the Church of Atom wasn't going to march around and threaten people anymore.

Walking over and sitting down at the counter outside the Brass Lantern, he looked over at Jenny and said "What's the special today?"

She smiled and moved her face within an inch of his. "Anything you want."

"_Shit shit shit shit shit. What do I say?"_ Staring blankly for a few seconds, he said "Uh.... some of that brahmin steak would be nice. And maybe a few of those mutfruit."

He wasn't sure if the look on her face was confusion, sadness, or anger. The best guess was a little of all three. She turned around and went after the food. As she disappeared inside, Jericho elbowed him in the back.

"What are you, retarded? You just saved her ass and she's coming onto you. Jesus, I don't care what that vault of yours was like, that would've been obvious to a five year old."

He turned around slowly. "Sit down at the other end of the bar. Jenny hates you and I'd like to talk to her while I'm here."

The old cutthroat gave him a short angry stare. "Best be a little more polite, that kind of shit could get you killed. Still, if you're just going to brush her off, maybe you could send her my way...."

"Just go already." Jericho didn't budge an inch. After a few moments, a smile popped up on the wanderer's face as he said "Fine, if you want to stand here, I'll move down."

Without looking at the pissed-off raider, he got up and moved down to the other end of the restaurant's outside bar. Sure, there were only four seats outside, but it was still far enough in his opinion.

Just as Jenny came back out with the food, Jericho had made his way over to the lone wanderer's side of the bar. "No one pulls that kind of bullshit on me! You think you can just sit there and talk shit?!"

After setting the plate down, she walked around and said "Would you just leave already Jericho? I've had it with you, you're not welcome here anymore."

"Shut your mouth, you stupid tease bitch!" With a quick turn and backhand Jericho smacked Jenny in the face, sending her to the ground. Michael began to feel that familiar anger build up inside of him again, and without thinking he put a punch square into the side of Jericho's head.

The former raider fell to the ground not far from Jenny. She had already gotten to her feet, and she decided to kick him in the balls. The scuffle had attracted the attention of most of the people nearby, but the howl that came from Jericho was enough for the entire town to hear.

She started laughing, and he couldn't help but chuckle a little. Though to a point the actions were involuntary, their humor was enough to inflate Jericho's rage even further. Rising from the ground with one hand on his family jewels, he pulled a combat knife from under his armor and yelled "I'm gonna kill ya bitch!"

A normal person's reaction time would have been far from enough, but the wanderer was armed with a V.A.T.S. module, and he put it to good use. In the space of a second, he had wrestled away Jericho's knife and delivered two more blows to the side of his head. Reeling from the sudden and unexpected impacts, he staggered backwards for a few seconds. Putting a sick smile on his face, he drew his assault rifle off his back and aimed it at Michael.

Several shots went off. "_It doesn't hurt. What the hell?_" Looking down at himself, Michael was surprised to find that he didn't have any bleeding holes anywhere. Glancing at Jericho, he saw that the man had dropped his rifle and fallen to his knees. He didn't seem to be bleeding very much, but there were several craters on the front of his leather armor. As the retired raider fell onto his back, the wanderer looked over toward the Brass Lantern. Leo was standing in the doorway of the restaurant, an N99 at the end of his outstretched arm.

Policing the rifle quickly, the just in time addict switched his aim to Jericho's head and simply said "You move, you die."

Arriving late as usual, Lucas sprinted down a nearby ramp with his assault rifle in hand. "What the hell is this?"

Shell-shock from the near death experience finally passed, and he walked forward to pick up the combat knife that he'd forced from Jericho's hand. Slipping it into his belt, he turned to the sheriff and said "Word fight turned into a fist fight. Asshole tried to kill me and Jenny. That's pretty much it."

Jenny wiped the small trickle of blood coming from her nose. "That's not nearly enough detail." While she told him what had happened, a newly arrived doc injected two stimpacks into the raider, who had already stripped off his armor and was trying to bandage his wounds. Before she could finish her story, Lucas stopped her and turned to Jericho.

"We let you in this town because you said that you were done with that life. Nearly a year now and you've done lots of stuff, but we still let you stay. Then you pull this, just because someone talked shit. Apparently what they say is true. Once a raider, always a raider. Letting you stay in town is unlikely, but you're not carrying weapons anymore." He pulled the assault rifle away from Leo and handed it to Michael. "Just like you said before. He pointed it at you, and it ain't his no more. Hope you agree Leo."

The boy let out a short laugh. "I said I wasn't going to take your gun for nothing, so consider it a trade. This pistol for this rifle. How about it Mike?"

Looking over the weapon briefly, he said "Thanks, but please don't call me Mike." It wasn't the standard R91 that the US Army had been using before the war. The markings were Chinese, which made absolutely no sense. Pulling out the magazine, he noticed that it was chambered for 5.56mm, exactly the same as the assault rifles he knew. The weapon seemed simpler than an R91, yet definitely more robust and more powerful. "Someone wana tell me how a weapon like this got halfway across the planet?"

"Didn't read your history back in the vault?" Church was smiling as he examined the raider's wounds. The bullets had been slowed considerably by the thick armor, and his chest wounds didn't look deadly. They were still bleeding, but the stimpacks Church had injected had already sealed the deeper tissues, insuring that he wouldn't bleed out.

"The Chinese had all sorts of spies and commandos over here before the war went atomic. They tried to start rebellions and such to weaken the USA, and smuggled an assload of weapons over here to arm all the pissed-off citizens."

Michael took one last look at the weapon before reinserting the magazine and lowering it. "Suppose that if Chinese pistols suck so much, they'd have to make up for it with better rifles." Glancing over at Jericho, he walked up to the defeated raider and removed the two extra magazines on his belt. "I need these more than you."

Jericho lunged at the wanderer after the short statement, but he was quickly met by a blow to the head from Lucas's rifle butt. "You're lucky I'm even letting doc Church heal you. Do that again and you'll be shot instead of pushed out of town."

"Well, if you want him to live, you're going to have to leave him in my clinic overnight. Dammit, that hit reopened one of his wounds." The impact of the rifle and the ground had produced more blood from one of the holes in Jericho, but the doctor simply handed the raider a rag instead of producing another stimpack. "Those things are expensive, pressure'll do just fine on a single wound."

Lucas looked like he wanted to hit Jericho again. "You're sure about him needing more help?"

"Yeah. A little med-x and a few weaker healing compounds, combined with a good night's rest, will make sure he can at least walk unaided. Now get up already, I'm not healing you in the streets. And where's your fucking caps, this ain't free."

Smiling as he watched the doc pull Jericho up and order him around, he turned back toward Jenny. "I'm sorry about the steak and mutfruit thing."

"Huh? Oh, you mean.... well, what's wrong?"

"It's something I don't want to talk about."

"What if no one else was around? I'd really like to know."

Warning bells went off in Michael's head. "_This is not something that could possibly be happening in the real world. What do I say?_"

"Uh, well.... If you really want an explanation, then I guess."

"Give me ten alright? I'll meet you at your place."

Before he could say anything else, she had turned around and disappeared inside the restaurant. "_My place? How could she already know Lucas gave me the house up there?_" Nuclear bomb cores, hostage situations, and now this. Starting to walk toward his new home, he wondered exactly how smooth he could possibly be in this kind of conversation.

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Off the bed and already taking his vengeance against the church? Ridding the entire town of three hundred pounds of radiation? All with a hot girl hitting on him? Things are turning around for the lone wanderer. Is his journey ending in this town, or will he continue to pursue his father? Tune in next time on Wasteland Sheriff!


	11. Doing What Must Be Done

Sorry for the delays, I know my first few chapters were coming out less than a week apart, but work's been murder and the economy sucks. Just can't get any time anymore.

Fully healed and well, with the exception of a slight jet addiction, the lone wanderer starts to turn his attention to his new home in Megaton. Putting down roots outside the vault has been his intention for some time, but will it stop him from continuing his search for his father James? And how will the attention of two very different women affect his shattered mind as he tries to get over the pseudo-loss of Amata?

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Chapter 11 – Doing What Must Be Done

Arriving at the entrance, he unlocked the door to his new home and found a rather interesting surprise waiting for him. Less than ten feet from the door was a deactivated Mr. Handy robot, holding itself up by its arms rather than it's pulse engine. Spherical grey body, three arms, three eyes/sensors on their own miniature appendages, and a boatload of tools to top it all off. Approaching his new toy slowly, he jumped and nearly drew his weapon as it suddenly activated.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Wadsworth, and I am the robo-butler of this domicile. Am I to assume that you are now both the new owner of myself and this structure?"

Slightly amused by the robot's British accent, he watched for a moment as the robot fired up its engine and began to hover. "Yes. I'm Michael. Pleased to meet you."

"And I you. I am sorry for my deactivated state, but I conjectured that saving power until I was needed would be appreciated by my new master. Are there any questions you have about your new home?"

"Hmm. It all looks pretty good. The last guy should've had a little more furniture, though." Looking around, the large room at the entrance was pretty bare, with two sets of lockers, a floor-mounted series of shelves, and a strange rack on the side wall. As he looked up, he was intrigued to find that the house's second floor was partially open with a railing around it.

"An atrium, eh? Makes the place seem a little more roomy. Still, could use the extra space if it was a regular floor. Anyway, back to the furniture issue. What is there, and where can I get more?"

The robot paused for a moment, assessing the question. "There is a bed and desk in the office, with matching chair of course. A small kitchenette hidden partially behind the stairs" he pointed with one of his arms "contains a refrigerator that has been out of coolant for some time and a sink connected to the city's water supply. Though the sink is functional, its potability is questionable for an organic being such as yourself. Avoiding radiation and fine grit is much easier should you drink from the condensation system."

"Condensation system? What?"

"I am sorry for the confusion sir. The previous owner had installed a specialized system to collect water from the atmosphere. Due to its purity, the water is comparable to that filtered by a pre-war purification system. Unfortunately, due to the dry and hot climate, it produces water very slowly, not enough to sustain a single human being on only its production."

"Nice. Did you store any between now and the former owner?"

"He had a five gallon tank built into the system for during his extended journeys. It is now full, but I must reiterate how slowly it refills. It takes approximately three weeks to fill the container when it is empty, depending on atmospheric conditions. My calculations indicate that an average healthy male your size would require at least one gallon daily, estimating your standard work load, perspiration, and minor amounts of fluid gained through consumption of solid food."

"Well, thanks for the math. Remind me to either expand the system or build something else to go with it. You say the fridge doesn't work?"

"No sir, its usefulness in the area of sustenance preservation only extends to foods that do not require refrigeration. As for the portion of your question as to where more furniture can be acquired, I would only be able to suggest Craterside Supply. I do not have any information on where furniture could be acquired outside of Megaton."

"Alright. I'm going to look around a bit, you can do whatever you want until I need you." Leaving the robot, he looked around a little bit. There was some smoked meat and a few pre-war food items in the fridge, but he doubted that the two hundred year old cans of Cram or Pork n' Beans would taste very good. The sink, as expected, produced water from its spigot. It wasn't quite clear, there was a bit of a brown tinge to it. "_I have got to rig up a purifier for myself. Or maybe the town's purification system can be upgraded. Moira said the guy that ran the place needed some help...._"

Walking over to the strange rack on the side wall, he stared at it for a moment. It had a series of step-like shelves across the top of it. There were a number of round indentations, each with several letters inside. STR, PER, END, the list went on. One of them caught his eye; it said MED. For some reason, the bobblehead that he'd taken from James's office in the vault came to mind. Pulling the figure from his bag, he looked at the underside of it's base. It said MED. "_Do not tell me this is coincidence._"

As he placed the bobblehead onto the indentation, Wadsworth suddenly shouted "You've found one! You've found one!"

"What? What the hell are you talking about?"

"My former master was most interested in acquiring a collection of Vault-Tec bobbleheads. He found this stand in an old house several years ago, and once he discovered its purpose he spent much of his free time searching for them. Unfortunately, they were rare items before the war, to say nothing of today. I am surprised to see that one still exists at all."

Counting for a moment, he saw that there were a total of twenty indentations, including the one now filled by his bobblehead. "_MED.... medical? Medicine? The little guy is holding a miniature syringe. I thought that was what they all had. Maybe the rest hold different stuff or have something to do with jobs._" He turned around and headed for the stairs, muttering to himself "This is going to be a wonderful obsession for me. If I have one, I have to find the others."

As he reached the base of the stairs, a cough escaped from his mouth. It quickly turned into a short coughing spell, ending as soon as he reached into his jumpsuit and extracted the jet canister. His cravings were no longer the only thing demanding that he take more jet. Breathing in deeply through the inhaler, he thought "_Maybe it's an addiction. But if I keep going, just one hit at a time, I'll break myself off this stuff by next week._"

Retreating upstairs, he found the small atrium centered in the main room on the second floor. Looking over the railing, he saw Wadsworth deploy some kind of vacuum attachment and attempt to clean the dirt he'd brought into the house. Smiling, he turned back to find two doors not far from the stairs.

One door led into a fairly small room, not much larger than a closet, that contained a lot of junk, including what he assumed to be the water system Wadsworth had spoken of. He pulled an empty bottle from his pack and placed it under the spigot. Turning it slowly, a jet of crystal clear water hit the bottom of his Vault-Tec water bottle. After he turned it off, he brought the refilled container to his lips and slowly sipped from it. "_Not bad._"

Moving on to the master bedroom, he found that it was somewhat larger, and it included the bed and desk he'd been craving. Setting his pack down, he let himself fall onto the bed. It was old and a little dingy, but right now it was the softest and most comfortable bed on earth.

"Intruder! Intruder! Identify yourself!"

Snapping back to reality in an instant, he rushed out of the room and down the stairs, hoping that Wadsworth wasn't trying to kill his guest. Amazingly, the robot was simply flying in circles around the room, continuing to yell "Intruder!"

"It's okay Wadsworth. Thank God no one gave you combat programming." He turned toward Jenny, who was standing in the doorway with eyes wide open. "No offense meant. I'm not saying you couldn't handle a robot by yourself, but these guys can do wicked things with their saws. One of them ruined my birthday cake back in the vault."

She started laughing. "Wow, you really had a hard life in there, didn't you? Anyways, how about a housewarming gift?" She produced a bottle filled with amber whiskey from her pocket.

"Nice to know I've got such great neighbors in town."

She looked around the room for a second before she said "Where's the furniture?"

"Place came without it. Guess the last guy pawned it off or something. Only chair in the house is upstairs, next to the desk and bed. That's it for furniture."

"Okay, then we'll take the party there." Before he could say a word, the girl had bounced up the stairs and found the room. Following her, albeit somewhat reluctantly, he found her sitting on the bed, sipping from the container. "You don't mind, do you?"

He smiled. "If you're gonna give it to me, then I'm gonna break it out right now. Sorry I don't have any glasses."

"You act like you can't just drink it from the bottle. Or was that considered savage back in your vault?" She laughed as she took another swig from the container. "_For God's sake stop the laughing. Anything but laughing._" Shoving his thoughts away, he pulled the bottle from her and drank as much as he could without choking, which wasn't much.

"Easy killer, we got all night." She laid back on the bed, her feet still hanging over the edge. "You're lucky. I gotta share the upstairs of the restaurant with my brothers, but you got this whole place to yourself. And this bed is pretty comfy compared to mine. I like this." She stretched her arms and let out a soft sigh.

"_Yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no._" "Goddammit!" were the words that came from his mouth. A moment later, he realized that he'd said the word instead of thinking it.

She sat up instantly. "What? Am I going too fast? I mean, is.... is it me?"

"No! It's...." Setting the bottle on the desk, he walked over and sat down next to her. "I lost someone back in the vault. It's the reason why I was so willing to leave, and it's also why I'm acting this way. Jenny, you've got a body to die for and a personality to match, but I'm really messed up right now. You've really grown on me since I came to town, and I do want to hang out with you, but nothing can go too far until I either get over it or go see a shrink."

Her face cracked a small smile. "Then we'll be friends right now." She got up, retrieved the bottle, and returned to the edge of the bed. "Here's to new friends."

After she took a drink, she passed the bottle to him. Looking at her for a moment, he said "Bottoms up."

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The noise was loud. Much as he wanted to go back to sleep, he was definitely awake now. Looking over, he saw Jenny leaning against him, still asleep. The empty bottle still in his hand, he thought "_Did we?_" Both of them were still wearing their clothes, so he figured that the only thing that had happened was that they had too much to drink and took a short nap. No light was coming through the room's small window, so it had to be night by now. But what was that noise?

"Intruder! Intruder! Identify yourself!"

A loud _crack_ was the only answer the wanderer heard to the question, followed by the sound of something metal hitting the floor. Jumping to his feet, he drew his N99 and walked to the door.

He opened the room's door to find Jericho standing right outside, a baseball bat in his hands. Before he could even think, Jericho had brought the bat up and into his pistol, disarming him. Jericho again took a swing at him. Attempting to block the shot with his arm, the bat connected with the back of his pip-boy, shattering the case and causing an explosion of sparks in the raider's face. Both recoiled from the sudden event, Jericho with his eyes blinded and Michael with his arm likely broken.

Clutching his arm, he was shocked to see an unarmed Jenny lunge head first at Jericho. She knocked him down and started wailing on him, landing blow after blow. With renewed energy, the wanderer jumped forward and joined the assault with his functioning arm. But even with his chest perforated by bullets a few hours ago, the man's strength was enough to stop a young woman with no combat training and a vault officer with a broken arm. Kicking Michael aside easily, he picked up Jenny and dangled her over the railing around the atrium. "Too bad you had to fight so much, I planned on finishing what I started a long time ago!" He let go, watching her fall to the floor below. A sick smile on his face, the former raider turned around to find the lone wanderer stumbling toward his weapons in the office.

Grabbing him from behind, Jericho put the bat under Michael's chin and began to pull back as hard as he could. With his pip-boy dead, he had no V.A.T.S. With Jenny unconscious or dead on the floor, he was alone. With no weapons and a broken arm, he had no chance at fighting back. "_The knife!_" The combat knife he'd taken from a defeated Jericho earlier was right in his belt. Reaching for it with his good arm, he brought it back directly where he thought the man's torso was.

A grunt echoed from Jericho's mouth. Not the scream Michael's been hoping for. Jericho released him from the death grip and pulled the semi-conscious wanderer's hand from the sunken blade before continuing. "Not enough to put me down asshole. I'm gonna kill you, and it's gonna be slow."

Feeling a strange euphoria from the lack of oxygen, he nearly lost consciousness before he heard a strange series of noises. First a buzz, then some kind of long sloppy noise, as if someone had slapped a raw piece of meat on a counter. A gurgling finished the audio show, and Jericho's hands slipped away from the bat. He fell forward onto Michael, pinning him to the ground.

For a few moments, all he could do was lie there under Jericho, catching his breath and wondering why he wasn't dead. Slowly pushing himself out from under Jericho, he felt warm blood dripping down his neck, but it wasn't his. As he turned over, he noticed a strange cut on the back of the man's head. It was perfectly horizontal and very deep, at least halfway to the other side of the former raider's skull. It explained the blood stains on his jumpsuit, but who'd done that?

"Sir, I am terribly sorry for my lack of aid. As you said to the young lady earlier, I lack combat programming, but I was able to ascertain the location of your assailant's central processor and damage it beyond repair."

Moving his head to the side, he saw Wadsworth, buzzsaw attachment still spinning, with blood splattered all over his exterior plating. With a groan in his voice, he said "Nice work. Remind me to get you a present, like an integrated plasma cannon."

His lungs on fire from being deprived of oxygen, he instinctively reached into his pocket and withdrew the jet canister. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had already taken a deep hit from the cartridge. "_Control dammit, control!_" Suppressing the urge to take another hit, he put it back in his pocket and stumbled down the stairs. Kneeling at Jenny's side, he looked her over briefly. Nothing obvious appeared to be wrong, but only an idiot would say she was unharmed. "Please get doc Church Wadsworth. Be sure to tell him to bring his gear."

While the robot went to fetch the doc, Michael went upstairs and grabbed his bag with his good hand. After making his way down the stairs, he opened his bag and looked inside. "_Stimpacks and med-x. And a bunch of drugs. What the hell do you use on someone who got thrown off a balcony?_" After a few moments, he simply started to rub the side of her face. The unorthodox treatment worked, and her eyes slowly opened, signifying that she had returned from the dream world.

"What the.... where is that prick?"

"Don't move. You took a pretty bad hit."

"You're one to talk, that arm's not moving. Where is he?"

"Upstairs. Dead. Wadsworth had a little combat in him after all. The doc'll be here in a second, just lay back."

He grabbed her hand with his good arm, squeezing gently while looking at her. "_It happened again. But she didn't die. And she's not her._"

Church arrived, running through the open door with his bag. Wadsworth, along with what seemed to be half the town, was right on the doc's heels. Leo and Andy rushed over to their sister, the doc split his attention between the two victims, and Lucas ran up the stairs with his assault rifle drawn, as if Jericho was going to get back up. "What happened?"

"She got thrown from up there. I took a baseball bat to my arm and got choked, but I'm okay."

"Yeah right. I can see from here your left arm is limp." A poke from the doctor quickly pulled a short yelp of pain from Michael. "Exactly. Stop the heroic bullshit already. You should have been dead by now with all the shit you've been pulling in this town." He produced a syringe of med-x from his bag and injected a small dose into the wanderer's arm. "Get to work on a splint."

As the doctor turned his attention to Jenny, Michael turned toward Wadsworth. "Please retrieve Jericho's weapon." Hovering his way up the stairs, the robo-butler returned a few minutes later with the bat in one of his grasper attachments. "Would you please saw the weapon as necessary to make a splint for my lower left arm?"

Ignoring the protests from several other people in the room, the robot quickly cut the bat into two segments and a pile of wood chips. "Are these to your specifications master?"

"Yes, perfect." Pulling out the partially burned jumpsuit he had stuffed into the bottom of his bag, he handed it to Wadsworth. "Since I'm one arm short, would you mind cutting this into strips suitable for a splint?"

"Of course sir." One minute later, Michael had two pieces of wood on his arm, wrapped in a truly wasteland fashion. He admired the handiwork for a moment before turning his attention to the pip-boy. Moving the strips over slightly, he pressed several buttons on the device. The screen stayed dead. Carefully moving his arm, he looked at the backside of the wrist computer. The main board didn't appear to be damaged, and most of the other components were on the other side. What was wrong were the still-sparking batteries, crushed and leaking small amounts of acid from the impact of Jericho's weapon.

"_Only the batteries. Thank God. No way I'd find replacement parts out here. But where the hell do I get new batteries?_" After a moment's thought, he mentally slapped himself. He carefully removed the broken batteries from the unit before flipping a tiny switch on the exposed portion of his pip-boy's upgrade card. The screen flickered, then came back online. Scrolling through a few menus, he thought to himself "_Damn wasteland survival upgrade comes with an extra battery, and it's a better one than the pip-boy's original. Not going to need to worry too much about batteries after all._" He briefly tested his V.A.T.S, watching the whole world slow down before he deactivated it early.

As he moved his arm back down, the dull sensation reminded him that all he had done was wrap his arm and let the doctor give him some painkillers. He pulled a stimpack from his backpack and injected it into his forearm. Even with the med-x Church had given him, he could feel the liquid flowing through his arm, stimulating and accelerating his body's natural healing process. After a moment's consideration, he reached in his bag for another.

"Don't bother kid. It's a broken bone, stims can only do so much for that kind of thing. A second stim or even a third isn't going to do much in a bone wound like that one. The exact same result of two more stimpacks can be achieved by wearing that stupid looking cast for forty-eight hours or so. Just plenty of sleep so enough calcium bonds the fractures. And you should know, that bat would've sold for twenty, maybe twenty-five caps."

"And you would've sold me a splint for fifty. How is she?"

"Sleeping. Gave her a mild dose of med-x for the pain. Her injuries aren't too bad, there's nothing progressive. She just needs a few days in bed. You two, you can drag her home now." Andy and Leo carefully picked Jenny up, both giving Michael angry looks before they left. Without a single idea what to say, he let them go before turning his attention to the sheriff.

"How the hell did Jericho get a bat? Or even get out of Church's clinic?"

Lucas stared at Church for a moment. "Doc said he gave Jericho a load of med-x, so I left for a quick dinner with my son."

Church quickly shot back. "He was a hardy guy, I should've given him more vitamin M, I shouldn't have gone to sleep, blah blah blah. Lay it all on me."

Lucas continued. "As for the bat, he must've had that in his house. Didn't need it until now I guess. Obviously won't need it anymore."

The lone wanderer sat back against the wall for a moment. Jenny had begun to not only remind him of Amata, but also of Silver. With Jericho gone, that meant....

"Jericho has his own house right?"

Most of the people in the room turned toward him. Lucas responded "Yeah, but you've already got this place. What do you need a second house for?"

"Not for me. You remember a girl named Silver?"

If anyone hadn't been looking at him yet, they focused their attention on him now. "I met her before I got to Megaton, and I owe her my life. If she's telling the truth, then she's not a thief and you guys should let her back in town. And with Jericho's place open, I say she gets it."

After a few murmurs from the people present, someone decided to say "What makes you think she's innocent?"

He looked over at the general direction of the sound and rolled his eyes for effect. "How many of you handed caps to Moriarty to fuck her? Did you give her any caps? It ever occur to you that she was the one doing the work? She took what she'd earned, and she ran because Moriarty would've tried to stop her."

Getting no response from the crowed, he turned back to Lucas. "Then she's innocent until you guys can prove she took caps that weren't really hers. Matter of fact, Moriarty might still have some of her caps, you think about that? Now on to the dead bastard. If Jericho has no next of kin or will, then how does the law apply to his possessions in the psychopathic situation?"

"Law of the wastes kid. He tried to murder you, and you killed him. His stuff is yours. If you seriously want to give away his house to a whore, then no one here will stop you. And after a speech like that, I think you've made a good enough case to us to let Silver back in town. But I don't know how you're going to keep Moriarty from killing her, especially if you leave town anytime soon."

Slowly walking up the stairs, he surveyed the scene before him. Jericho's corpse had completely bled out in the last few minutes, and there was a massive pool of partially clotted blood near and on his body. Pulling his knife from the stomach of the dead piece of meat, he used its clothes to clean the implement before searching the corpse's pockets Putting the key he found in his jumpsuit, he grabbed the former raider's leg and yelled "Would anyone mind helping me move a corpse?"

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Dragging a corpse one-handed out of town by one's self is difficult at best, but Michael was heavily distracted by the ideas that were going through his mind. Looking for a moment at the church member and Jericho, one thought went through his head. "_Do I really have the balls to add a third to this pile?_"

Regardless of the answer to that question, he knew that the idea of leaving Megaton behind in this state was an impossibility for him. Jericho was gone, the church of Atom was put in its place, but there was still one important thing to take care of. With determination and fear combined, it was a strange walk at best to Moriarty's saloon.

Opening the door slowly, he took a look around. The patrons all looked the same, but it didn't take a really perceptive guy to see that Mr. Burke had disappeared. "_Glad to see that crazy guy is gone._" Nova was sitting on one of the stools at the bar and Gob was standing behind it, waiting for someone to order a drink. As he sat down, he turned to Nova.

"Don't believe we've been formally introduced. I'm Michael, just moved into town."

"It's Nova. And if you don't mind, I'd really like to take tonight off."

"That's actually kinda what I wanted to talk to you about. And Gob too. Where's Moriarty?"

"Sleeping. Why?"

The wanderer turned toward Gob. "If he died, would you guys get this place?"

Both ghoul and whore looked at their potential savior. "What are you suggesting?"

"If you guys owned this place, would you give Silver a job and a cut?"

They were both silent for a second. Gob responded "She's coming back to town?"

Seemingly unfazed by whoever this Silver person was, Nova said "What exactly do you mean?"

Michael smiled. "A beautiful woman like you makes the perfect barmaid, but you can't be working twenty-four/seven. What if I knew another woman who needs a few caps to live on?"

She smiled back at him. "That's all? You're offering to... make Moriarty go away and hand us this saloon and all you want is us to let your friend in the place? Nothing else?" She gave the wanderer a questioning look.

Giving her back a scoundrel's grin, Michael over-emphasized the motion of looking up and down Nova's body. "Not that you don't have a lot more to offer, but I'm not in the market right now." He turned back to Gob and slipped five caps onto the table. "The strongest stuff you've got."

After a shotglass of something called rotgut, Michael unslung his pack on the counter and withdrew four of his five remaining syringes of med-x. "More than enough." Both Nova and Gob knew what he meant to do, and without a word they both pointed at the door to the man's office. He pulled his pack back to his shoulders and carefully made his way through the door as quietly as possible.

The hedonistic bar owner was lying face up in bed, an empty bottle of booze in one of his hands. "_He won't feel anything. And he deserves to feel some pain anyway. This asshole's guilty of rape, extortion, slavery, even murder.... It has to be done._" Setting the other three syringes on the table next to the bed, he carefully took the fourth and steadied himself for a moment.

With one fluid motion, he put a hand on Moriarty's mouth and plunged the needle into the man's chest with his other. Quickly injecting the entire contents of the fresh medicine, he watched as Moriarty awoke quickly, eyes displaying terrible fright, and then slowly fell unconscious ten seconds later. Twisting the idea of what this man had done to Silver, Nova, and Gob into as much anger as he could summon, he located a vein in the unconscious man's arm and injected the second. And the third. And the fourth.

The man wasn't breathing when he checked after the fourth injection. A pang of regret hit him. "_This is cold blood. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing._" Reaching in his pocket for a hit of inhalable courage, he withdrew his jet canister and took a deep breath. Newfound energy flowing through him, he put one hand on the man's mouth and used his other to pinch the man's nose shut. "_Fine. I'm a fucked up guy. But better a murderer than an attempted murderer._"

After an eternity of no response from Moriarty, he knew that the man was dead. Slowly searching his pockets, he found a massive bag of caps. He walked back out to the counter and counted out a hundred caps in front of the two new owners. "Moriarty pulled this out of me for the information on my dad. I hope you don't mind."

Taking the rest of the caps from him with eyes wide open, one of them whispered "You actually did it?"

Forcing a smile, he said "I did nothing. Moriarty OD'd on med-x. Tomorrow morning is going to be quite the discovery for the town. Guess his karma finally caught up with him. I'll bring your new employee by sometime tomorrow. For now, I've got to let her know."

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Given that it had been well over a week since Silver's last visitor and that she was always the one to make contact with the caravans, she was more than surprised to hear a knock on her door. Opening it slowly with her pistol drawn, when she saw his face she felt stupid for wondering who it was. "Here I am, wondering what kind of crazy polite weirdo would actually knock on my door, and I open it to see you. Should've known."

"Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?"

Turning around, she sat down in a chair and faced toward him. She hadn't expected one guy to be able to do anything. "Bad news I guess."

"I tried my best to get you a place in town, but I didn't do so well. I killed a guy and took his house, but I've gotta warn you. He used to be a raider, so the place might smell bad." He produced Jericho's key from his pocket.

Her eyes became wider than dinner plates. "This is the bad news? What the hell is the good news?"

With his hand outstretched and still holding the key, he continued "I convinced Lucas and some of the other residents to let you back in town. Combined with my support, I think you don't have to worry about any angry mobs. Plus Moriarty's dead too, if you like I got you a piece of the place alongside the new owners."

Standing there for a moment, he was worried that the woman might have been put into a coma by his words. Walking over to her, he grabbed her hand and pressed the key into it. "If you need anything else, like help moving, you could tell me."

Instantly jumping to her feet, she encircled the wanderer in a bear hug and started repeating the words "Thank you!" over and over through a tear choked voice. Returning the hug with one arm, he said "Don't mention it."

She moved back, a few tears of joy on her face. "Hell yes you can help me move. Not like I have much to take." In less than fifteen minutes, Silver had packed everything she considered valuable and was now lugging bags and boxes toward Megaton, along with Michael's help.

"So you killed a guy and got his house. Doesn't sound like the Megaton I remember. And no offense, but the idea of you doing something like that is.... well...."

"Don't give me that look, technically I didn't even kill him. It was my robot."

"Robot? What the hell have you done since we talked last?" In the ten minutes it took to get to Megaton's gates, he filled her in on everything. Trading, talking to Moriarty, disarming the town's bomb, pissing off the Church of Atom, becoming heavily irradiated, getting his own house complete with a Mr. Handy robot, and the death of three of the town's worst residents. Exciting, to say the least.

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There was someone waiting on the other side of the gate for Michael's return. He had been planning to explain himself to Leo later, just not in front of Silver. "_This conversation's not gonna go well._"

"I can deal with the fact that my little sister's a grown woman, but you two were in that house of yours all afternoon. You owe me an explanation."

Silver turned toward Michael, a wide smile on her face. "This I gotta hear."

"For God's sake Silver, not now. Leo, we talked, we had a lot to drink, but I swear I didn't touch her. We both fell asleep after sharing a bottle of whiskey, and we woke up to find that asshole Jericho coming at us with a bat. That's all."

The former addict turned his attention to the woman at Michael's side. "Hey, it's you. Don't know if you remember me, but we had a few good times."

Her amused expression quickly changed to an angry one. "You fucking asshole." Even carrying her things, she was more than able to kick Leo swiftly in the balls.

Falling to the ground and wailing, Leo quickly attracted the attention of all those still out after dusk. Watching several people assemble, Michael only hoped that her latest action wouldn't get her thrown out of town. With Lucas nowhere in sight, he would have to make things work on his own.

"Okay people, Leo made a crack about Silver's past and she kicked him in the nuts. Nothing happening. Just go away."

Amazingly, everyone present minus Leo and Silver walked away. "Well, first you get me back home and then you pull everyone off like you're some kind of sheriff. Does Lucas have a new deputy?"

Ignoring the comment, he set down the small crate he was carrying and picked up Leo, still moaning and mumbling incoherently. "Yeah, I know, I've got balls too. It hurts, now just get up. And apologize already, that kind of shit is going way too far and you know it."

With the angry expression on his face melting somewhat, he turned to Silver. "Fine. Sorry."

"Whatever. You, your brother, and your sister still run the Brass Lantern?"

Leo's frown disappeared. "You remembered all that?"

"Of course. Every time I looked out over the town and thought about running from Moriarty, I looked at your place and saw your sister outside. She and I were opposites, the only girls at the bars. She was serving food and I was serving me. Have to say I always envied her. Ever wonder what it'd be like if some asshole was pimping her out in some other town?"

Leo's face became somewhat sullen. "Look, I never really thought about...."

"Forget it tiny dick. Past is the past. And as for your sister, you should be happy this guy is spending his time with her. He's the last person on earth who'd fuck someone right now."

Somehow Leo missed the comment about his genital size and only concentrated on what Silver had mentioned about a possible relationship between his sister and Michael. "What? Why?"

Michael quickly interrupted. "For God's sake, no more talking. See you later Leo, Silver come on already!" He picked back up the crate and started walking toward Jericho's house, the woman on his heels and the man returning to his restaurant.

"Now, please remember that I've never been in here. I fought the guy an hour ago."

"House is a house. Some abraxo and irradiated water will get any stains out." She pushed open the door to reveal an amazingly clean abode. Though Jericho may have been a former raider, the place was relatively tidy. The first thing he noticed was a small sword on top of a shelf. Picking it up, he looked closely at the Chinese markings on it. "_Traditional officer's sword of the Chinese Army. Church wasn't lying about the infiltrators and commandos in the great war. Why didn't Jericho use this instead of that bat?_"

After sheathing the sword, he handed it to the unpacking woman. "How's this for intimidation? Having this with your guns should make any assholes like Leo shut up."

"What, you don't want it?"

"I don't have the room. Take a look." He showed her his knife, pistol, submachine gun, and the sawed-off shotgun tucked in his bag. "And I took an assault rifle off the guy that owned this house. No idea if or how I'm gonna take these many weapons with me."

"Don't know, this thing looks valuable. But I better take it quick, before you get smart. I'll unpack the rest later, show me your place."

After a moment's walk, he ended up back inside his own house with Silver in tow. Wadsworth hovered down the stairs and quickly introduced himself. "Hello, I am Wadsworth, the robo-butler of this domicile."

"I'm Silver. So you're the one who killed that guy?"

The robot floated back a few inches as if he was offended by the statement. "He attacked both myself and my master. Killing implies an unmediated and unwarranted action, I simply removed a hostile attacker who was a threat to both my master and this town."

Before Michael could respond, she continued with "Don't take it the wrong way lug nuts. I'm glad to see the kid got himself a good toy."

"Madame, I am no toy. I am a Mr. Handy robot with...."

"Wadsworth, how are those bloodstains coming?" He had always liked to think of himself as a show stopper.

"I have finished sir. The second floor is exactly the same as it was before."

"Good, please continue fixing up anything else you can find." As the robot floated away, the wanderer turned back to Silver. "I'm pretty sure that he's not artificially intelligent, but he's got enough speech subroutines and personality algorithms to go back and forth with you all day. Just treat him like he's a person."

"Never saw you as robo-sensitive. Show me around already." It only took a few minutes for him to show off the relatively small structure to her. She seemed to be jealous of the second floor, the water condenser, and the bobblehead stand, but he knew that giving her a house and a sword would be enough.

Ending with the master (technically only) bedroom, she strolled over to the desk and picked up the assault rifle. Cocking the weapon and examining it briefly, she said "You've finally got enough firepower to take on a super mutant. And it's one of those Chinese ones; they're way better than the regular models."

He took the weapon from her and set his pack on the desk, after which he pulled the submachine gun from his bag. "This enough firepower?" He took a step back and posed with the rifle and submachine gun, one in each hand.

"I really should insert some kind of 'big weapon' joke here, you know? But just so you know, from what I remember, the big part isn't a joke."

He stared at her after she said the words. After a few moments of silence, she said "Sorry. It was a compliment really."

"It's fine. No problem."

"Well, I guess we should both catch some sleep. See you later."

She turned as she headed out the door. "How about the first one to wake up grabs the other and drags their ass to breakfast?"

He smiled. "I'd like that. See you tomorrow."

As she closed the door, Wadsworth made one final attempt to make Michael's life miserable. "Sir, is she your mate, or was it the previous female who was injured?"

"Wadsworth! Neither, keep my social life out of your circuits."

"My processor is running through several errors right now sir. Though my knowledge of psychology and anatomy is limited, both appear to be healthy and physically attractive to male humans. As well, both displayed pheromone levels in your presence indicating attraction, and you were releasing similar pheromones while they were inside this structure. As well, your heart rate and skin temperature were significantly elevated while in their presence. Sir? Sir?"

Michael ignored the increasingly scientific conversation he was having with Wadsworth and climbed upstairs. "_Who the hell configured his sensors to detect that kind of shit?_" Turning around, he said "Sleep time for me Wadsworth. Don't wake me unless there's someone else trying to get in."

"Yes sir. As for before, my database on human psychology is quite limited, but I believe that your confusion with the opposite sex of your species would be best rectified by a dedicated psychologist, whether artificial or human."

"I'll be sure to keep an eye out for one, now no more audible alerts unless there's someone at the door." As the robot hovered away, he closed the door and returned to his new bed. "_Why me? I mean, seriously why?_"

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The impromptu meeting before the nightly sleep cycle in the vault had only happened because Amata had suddenly come up with an idea that needed attention. When Chip and Edwin finally arrived in the overseer's office, she began her proposal.

"Overseer, councilors, now that we've decided to seal the vault but allow the return of James and Michael, perhaps we should use the vault's long range transmitter to inform them of the situation." Mr. Brotch, the one person she thought she could count on, was the first to disagree.

"The signal from that beacon is omni-directional and easily traceable, not to mention that it extends for a significant distance beyond the nearby areas he could have reached by now. We rely more on our unknown location than the door and our security forces. The danger of attracting unsavory elements to the vault is too high."

Chip Taylor spoke next. "Much as I would like to consider the vault secure, that blast door won't hold forever against a determined attack, especially if high explosives still exist in significant quantities in the outside world. And our officers are ill-equipped to face adversaries with military grade armor and weapons."

Alphonse finished the short dismissal. "That transmitter was only intended for emergency contact with the American government or other Vault-Tec facilities, and both no longer exist. Besides, Michael said he would bring James back. He'll eventually return, even if he can't find his father. You should have more patience."

She stared at the floor for a moment. "He thinks I'm dead. I just can't stand that."

Edwin put his hand on her shoulder. "We took this job knowing that we'd have to put the vault above ourselves. Like I said, that signal's too easy to triangulate, and too many people outside know about us already. He's a tough guy, he'll be okay until he gets back."

"_But what if he doesn't come back? What if he decides to move on? What if he likes it out there? What if I'm the only reason he'd even consider coming back?_"

"Very well. Sorry to have disturbed you all so late in the evening. I suppose I'll see you all at next week's meeting, if not before then. Good night."

She wheeled around and briskly walked out of the room before anyone could respond. Fighting back tears, she quickly went back to the room that used to be home to two people.

"_Please come back soon. Somehow. Just.... give up on your dad and come back._"

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Giving up on James was far from Michael's mind, as it had become an obsession to him. All night long while Amata dreamed of Michael, Michael dreamed of a still-alive Amata, not knowing that she still breathed only a few miles away. The thoughts of both Silver and Jenny flew threw his head, mixing the emotions in his mind into an indescribable turmoil. Even if Amata was gone, he felt that starting a new life seemed impossible. It felt like betrayal to even think about it.

All that seemed logical to him was to go after James and force him to return to Vault 101. It would be the closest thing he would get to finishing what he considered the most important thing on earth; it would allow him to take one last look inside the vault and then leave for good. He'd get to see his old home one last time, in order and proper instead of the chaos and death during which he'd left. Maybe he'd even talk to Alphonse. He had to be feeling the same as him right now. Perhaps that was what it would take to finish his desire for closure, visiting a calmed Vault 101 and seeing that she truly was no longer there.

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"Sir, you have a visitor. Please awaken sir, it is nine forty-two in the morning and you have a guest."

He rolled out of bed and rubbed his eyes. "Now you're giving me the time? How about the temperature and weather?"

As he proceed down the stairs, the robot continued to process his master's request. "It is thirty degrees Celsius, or approximately eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Though I lack the necessary instruments for observing atmospheric conditions, given the climate change after the nuclear war my conjecture would be that the day will warm significantly and be very bright and sunny, with very little chance of precipitation."

"I have to program an understanding of sarcasm into you one of these days." Reaching the front door, he opened it to find Silver waiting, hand raised as if she was about to knock again.

"Too early?"

"No, just fine. Wadsworth, next time someone knocks, answer the door. And let them in if they're not a deranged killer."

After the robot responded "Yes sir.", he proceeded to walk down the ramp from his home to the bottom of the crater. "So how's the new house? No raider stuff hidden or anything?"

"Believe it or not, I found a teddy bear. Don't know the guy your 'bot killed, but he was one messed up son of a bitch."

Tossing the idea of Jericho snuggling with a teddy bear through his head, he reached the outside counter of the Brass Lantern and sat down, watching Andy come up to the counter. "Jenny okay?"

He gave Michael a neutral stare. "I already heard the excuse you gave Leo, so I'm not gonna ask you. As for her, she said the exact same story as you."

"That's not what I asked. Is she okay?"

Pausing for a moment, he said "She's still in bed, but she's doing okay. Asked about you every time she woke up though."

Silver sat down next to him and punched him in the arm. "Oh, looks like someone's got a crush on you. Not fair, I don't wana share you with any other girls."

"Please Silver, don't." He was too late, the comment had already reached Andy's ears. He was already on edge thinking that a complete stranger was taking advantage of his sister.

"What, are you some kind of womanizing player? Stay the hell away from my sister!"

"No, she's...." He couldn't take it. He got up and started walking away from the counter.

Before Silver could think of something to say, he had already walked halfway back to his house. She instead turned to Andy.

"I was playing around, okay? I saved his ass after he left the vault, and he saved my ass by getting me back into town. You should know, he lost a girl back in the vault. The closest your sister can get is nowhere near sex, he's still devastated."

Andy turned his gaze back toward Silver. "That's what's up? He's always moping around because he lost his wife?"

"Yeah, wife or girl, I have no idea which."

Andy stopped for a moment and turned away from her. "I can't believe I've been treating him like shit over this."

"He'll get over it. Just gimme breakfast to go for two and I'll get out of your face." She pulled some caps from her pocket and poured them on the table.

Bringing the food to her, he asked one last question before she got up. "Are you trying to be his rebound girl?"

A smile went across her face. "Hell no. He's nice to talk to and he's helped me a lot; that doesn't translate to hardcore fucking. After being alone for so long, you can expect someone to become friends with the first person they meet."

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"_Not again. Not again._" The same nightmare he'd been imagining since he left continued to play through his mind. Amata dying right in front of him, over and over again. Officer Mack and overseer Thomas beating her over and over, laughing like the sick maniacs they were. He couldn't move, he couldn't even speak. It didn't matter whether he was awake or sleeping, the scene still forced its way into his mind. Most of the time he could push it away, but now was not one of those times.

Collapsing on the bed upstairs in his new home, he tried his best to stop the tears, but nothing worked. Thinking about Jenny and Silver made him feel like he was betraying Amata, and the same nightmare simply forced his way back inside his skull. The thought of Silver made things even worse this time. "_She keeps making all those stupid comments. Is it the way she is? Is she a slut or am I just a few laughs to her?_" His whole body felt shaky; he suddenly realized that it had been forever since he'd had a hit of jet.

Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the canister and looked carefully at it. He had no idea what was inside, but he still took it. He had no idea what kind of side effects it had, but he still took it. He had no physical need for the drug, but he still took it. His brain screamed "_NO!_", but logic no longer worked on him.

He took a hit from the cartridge, then another, and then another. The inhaler was soon empty, and he let it fall to the floor. Things started to melt away; he felt so happy. "_What was I so sad about? Nah, it's not important._" He threw himself back onto his bed, arms outstretched as if he was trying to fly. "_This is great._" Somewhere in the back of his mind, Pink Floyd suddenly started playing.

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It was an unusual feeling for her. She'd never even slightly cared about anyone. Her parents might have been an exception, but they died when she was only a child. The customers and Moriarty saw her as property. She barely talked to Gob and had never had a chance to talk to anyone else in town. After she ran away, the most human contact she'd had was five minutes of trading with the occasional caravan. Doing jet and other drugs helped the loneliness, but sometimes she'd just walk out of her shack and explore the nearby area. It was a bad idea, with raiders and mutants all around the wastes, but she still did it with no one ever finding her. Until she found Michael.

The explosion from whatever he'd been using had instantly gotten her attention, and she'd run outside to find him lying in the dirt, badly injured and barely alive. She still didn't know why she had chosen to save him at that time, but it had been worth it. As far as she could tell, he was her friend, though she still wasn't exactly sure what the word meant.

Sex and companionship had always been two separate things to her. After spending so many years as a whore, she viewed sex with some level of repugnance. Her first time and every other time after had been she'd finally escaped Moriarty They never gave a shit about her; the idea of having an actual orgasm during sex was ludicrous to her.

She had no idea why she'd decided to screw Michael when they'd gotten high, but after a night like that she didn't regret it. "_Only reason it was good is because he was so high, he treated me like I was his girl._" Still, the concept of consensual sex was new to her, and associating it with much more pleasure wasn't much of a leap. With the new thought that sex might not be so bad, she kicked open his door and called out "Breakfast delivery! Get down here!"

Wadsworth was the only response she got. "I am terribly sorry madame, but he is unable to respond to you. My scans indicate that for some time now he has been in a drug-induced hallucinogenic state. Though his respiration, heart rate, and temperature are all significantly elevated, he is stable, and I believe he will be capable of talking to you in a few hours."

"Where the hell'd he get more of it?" Not listening to Wadsworth's response, she climbed the stairs and nearly dropped the food she'd been holding.

The kid was stretched out on the bed, occasionally moving a little bit but for the most part simply lying there. A canister of jet was on the ground, empty. "_Jesus. I shared one with him last time and now he takes a whole one?_" She set the food on the desk and sat down on the bed next to him. "_You are gonna have a serious headache in a while._"

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With his brain feeling as though it was on fire, he woke up in the early afternoon. He rolled over on top of his makeshift cast, sending a bolt of pain up his arm. He sat up instantly, yelling "Motherfucker!"

"Yeah, nice to see you up."

He turned his eyes to find Silver sitting at his desk, with two plates in front of her. One was empty, and the other was covered with various pieces of what he assumed was food. "I saved you some iguana and some old YumYum Deviled Eggs, but they're definitely cold by now."

"Oh.... thanks." Crawling out of bed slowly, he reached toward the desk, only to have his hand slapped away by Silver. She held up the empty jet canister he'd used earlier.

"Seriously, you don't need this shit."

"Neither do you."

"Of course not. I'm back in town, I've got a new home, and I've got a new friend. You can pretty much say the same thing. I can feel the shakes right now, that's why I'm going to head down to doc Church's in a little bit. I'm not going to be able to forget the bad things that happened to me no matter how many drugs I do, and the same applies to you."

He grabbed the plate and sat back down on the edge of the bed. Before he proceeded to bite into a piece of iguana, he said "Since when are you a psychologist?"

"Back at the Lantern, I did a little thinking. Sorry about all the jokes, I promise I'll cut it out. It's honestly part of my personality. I guess I really don't know how to be a regular friend, but I'm trying."

"I'm glad to hear you say that. For a while I honestly thought.... well.... I guess you know." He continued to shovel food into his mouth, ignoring the strange taste of the amazingly old eggs.

She pulled open a bag she'd gotten while he was knocked out. "It's my stash. All my chems. I'm trading 'em in for some withdrawal dampeners."

"With that many drugs you could probably get a few caps too."

"And you could do the same thing. Where's yours?" He weakly pointed toward his backpack, which she opened to find a similar collection. "_And I thought I had it bad. This kid's been an addict for a week or two and he's already catching up with me._"

She turned back toward him. "If you cared at all about her, you won't do any more of this shit."

The words hit him like a freight train. "Don't even try to pull something like that over my head."

"Fine. Become a worthless addict and try to drown your sorrows every day. After I hit the doc's, I'm heading over to the saloon to meet the new owners, check on that job, and get a hard drink. Don't you want something like that?"

He looked at his feet. The headache from so much jet was still pounding in his head. He couldn't just go walk around town to get rid of things, but he could at least get off jet. It would make things a little easier when he finally headed out after his dad. "_Finally.... now that's the right word. How long have I stayed in this town? A week? Two weeks? I don't even know how long I was on that bed in Church's clinic._"

He stood up and grabbed his backpack. "Silver, I'm leaving tomorrow. I have been standing still way too long. If I finish this shit with my dad and visit the vault one last time, it'll be enough for me to finally stop. But before I do anything, we've got a doc to see and some drinks to get."

-----------------------------------------------------

The feeling of power as he'd said the words was short-lived at best. The only reason he was moving forward was because Silver was leading him. Arriving at the clinic, they saw Church leaning over an unconscious man, checking his vitals.

"Oh, hey. Merchant got stung by a radscorpion before he made it here. Not enough to be deadly, but he was in serious pain. All it takes is a little antidote and med-x, but I'll probably be able to pull fifty caps out of him when he wakes up."

They both stared at the doctor for a moment. One of them decided to say "Do you ever think about anything but caps?"

"Well, do either of you ever think about anything but drugs?" The statement hit both Silver and Michael at the same time, and they both looked ready to kill the doctor.

"For Christ's sake, can't you take a joke? I assume that's the reason why you're here? Withdrawal dampeners?"

"Yeah" they both said in unison. Church reached over to a small crate on one of his shelves and withdrew two small bottles with crude labels. "This bottle you take twice daily, at morning and night. This other one is optional, you pop one of these if you're really starting to feel bad. Take more than three of them a day and you'll get worse, so remember that."

Michael took the bottles from Church. "Give me enough to last all the way through, I might not be here if I need a refill."

Pulling several more bottles out, he handed two of them to Silver and the rest to Michael. "As long as you don't do anymore drugs, this'll be more than enough. Remember, two pills daily. You've got enough for a month, don't stop taking them even if you feel you don't need them. Got to let your system flush out fully."

Before the doctor could start going on about the price, Michael walked over to the table nearby and proceeded to pull every drug out of his backpack besides the med-x. "All this for the withdrawal stuff, plus fifty more caps from you." Silver did the same with her chems before she said "Same deal."

Church stared at them for a few seconds. The wanderer continued with "These many drugs are worth way more, and you know it. We're giving you a bargain deal so you'll take them off our hands and out of sight."

The doc waited a moment longer before saying "Why the hell do I have to be the good guy? Fine, I guess it's an investment. Next time a caravan rolls through, I'll get at least get three hundred, probably more out of these many chems. Not to mention the other stuff I could make with these as raw materials."

"Glad to hear it." While the doc counted out the caps, Michael pulled a Vault-Tec water bottle out of his bag and downed one of the pills Church had given him. Handing the bottle to Silver, she took a swig and nearly choked.

"Is this purified? You've got to be fucking insane to just hand this to me."

"Yeah, I know, water's expensive enough out here and it's freakin' gold when it's purified. What was it you said before about me being dumb for giving away all sorts of stuff? After a whole house, you should've gotten used to it by now. Take a damn pill already."

Smiling, she put one in her mouth and swung her head back as she drank, overemphasizing the entire motion. Church handed him the caps at the same time as she handed him the bottle. Struggling with his left arm still in a cast, he accepted the items and began to pack up what was his. He looked over at the doc, who was poking around his newly acquired collection of drugs.

"Don't get addicted while I'm gone. If I'm going to be using you as a doctor in the future, you can't be a druggie."

"Unless you're hiding a bullet wound or you got cancer, get out of here already."

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With a smile on their faces, Silver and Michael walked toward Moriarty's Saloon. She paused at the door for a moment, but a push from Michael forced her to either open the door or hit her head on it. With a strange sense of both anger and nostalgia inside her, she walked straight up to the counter. "Hey Gob, how's it going?"

"Silver? Can't believe it's actually you."

"Yep. Been a long time, but I heard the new owner might have a different job for me, so I figured I'd talk to you before you put a 'Help Wanted' sign up."

"Well, it isn't just me." With perfect timing, Gob pointed toward Moriarty's old office as Nova came out. The redhead asked "Is this the new girl?"

Silver frowned slightly. "More like the old girl. I was the first one he whored out. With your looks, I assume Moriarty forced you into my job after I left."

Nova put the same look on her face. "In the past for both of us. I heard enough about you to agree with Gob that you get a one-third stake in here."

Gob nodded his head. "You mighta been gone for a while, but this place holds as many bad memories for you as for us. It's yours too."

Silver turned back to Michael. "And after all this, Mr. Wonderful is still not trying to pull a fuck out of me. I honestly don't understand you too well, but I'm glad to know you."

Nova stepped up to Silver and put her arm over her shoulder. "Same here. Can't believe you're not after either of us. You're one strange guy, at least from my point of view."

"I'll take a raincheck on that threesome you're offering me, for now I need another drink." With two sets of rolled eyes from the girls and a laugh from the ghoul, he sat down at the counter and had another shot of rotgut.

"What makes you think we'd give you that?"

He turned toward the girls. "Because you both think I'm absolutely stunning."

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The rest of the night ended up going just as well. After his quick drink, the wanderer walked back to his house and prepared for his journey. He fixed up the casing of his pip-boy as best he could, checked the splint on his arm, and modified his left holster to hold his sawed-off shotgun. After thinking for a moment, he carefully cut and sewed the right holster to fit his submachine gun while putting his pistol into his inside pocket. He checked the armored suit that Moira had made him, making sure that it was solid and good to go. Strapping the assault rifle on the back of his pack, one thought went through his mind. "_Ready for war._"

Setting the gear off to the side, he flopped onto his bed and let himself dream about a future in Megaton. No radioactive bomb, just a shell that the occasional merchant stared at before peddling his wares. A saloon run by two women and one ghoul, all welcoming him daily for a hard drink. A friendly family restaurant that was always serving great food. A store run by an eccentric woman who was constantly running experiments. A clinic owned by a gruff but well-educated doctor. Wondering exactly where he could fit into this situation in the future, he drifted off slowly to sleep, imagining his future both in the wasteland journey to come and his days in Megaton afterward.

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OOOOH! Things are finally going well for this guy. But now that he's finally got a new home, he's about to leave it to continue his perilous journey to bring closure to the past. How will he fare in the wasteland? Will he actually be able to find one man in the endless wasteland, or should he just have stayed in Megaton? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!

(I know, I know. "_Pink Floyd? WTF? While on jet?_" MY STORY! :)


	12. Leaving Home Again

Again sorry for the delays, world just isn't perfect.

Though he may have finally secured himself in a new life outside the vault, he just can't stay still as long as he has unfinished business to take care of. Preparing to leave Megaton behind, does he really have a chance at finding one man in the entire wasteland? Does he truly have what it takes to survive deep in the ruins of the old capitol?

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Chapter 12 – Leaving Home Again

The morning went exactly as he'd planned. Rising early, he checked his left arm and found it healed enough to go on without the makeshift splint. Removing it carefully, he then pulled on his armored vault suit and went to the Brass Lantern for a quick breakfast. Jenny still wasn't quite healed from her injuries, so Leo was standing over the outside counter. Ten minutes of small talk and food, along with a request to say goodbye to Jenny and Andy, was welcomed warmly by Leo. A few goodbyes went around, and he gave an injured Jenny's hand one last squeeze before he walked out of the restaurant.

Early as it was, he decided to get a quick drink, and only one place in Megaton had what he needed. After the untimely death of Moriarty, the town's bar was now called Gob's Saloon, named after the ghoul named Gob who ran the joint. It also had two young and beautiful barmaids named Silver and Nova, the former with whom he had become fast friends with after leaving the vault. Exchanging a minute's worth of goodbyes, including a quick hug with Silver, he took one morning shot of whiskey for three caps and headed out the door, comforted by the fact that one day he'd be back someday for a lot more drinks.

After ten minutes of wandering around town, he managed to find Lucas. After a handshake and farewell, he retreated back to the new home he was about to leave. Raiding his not-so-cold refrigerator, he put all the tins of Cram and Pork n' Beans that the previous owner had left into his bag. Not as tasty as the Lantern, but the wasteland didn't have too many restaurants. Walking over to the condenser, he filled every one of his Vault-Tec bottles with pure water, stuffing most in his bag and one on his belt, right next to his recently acquired combat knife. He hoisted all the gear he could comfortably carry, cleared and checked all his weapons, and gave some final instructions to his robo-butler Wadsworth.

The distance between his new home and the town gates wasn't very far, but the walk felt like it took a lifetime. Pausing at the gates, he put a smile on his face as he watched the old jet engine fire up and pull the gates away from him. "_The wasteland awaits._"

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With the protectron named Deputy Weld still guarding the entrance, he walked past the robot and up the rise to the east of Megaton. He took one last look back at the city, his new home, before he turned around and consulted the small map on his pip-boy. The info he acquired about his father was vague, but it pointed toward the barely-functioning Galaxy News Radio station, and that's where he had to go. Triangulating the weak signal, he carefully followed both his pre-war map and the path toward the downtown ruins that the folks in Megaton had recommended.

Other than an occasional radioactive insect of unusual size, the wasteland produced nothing he couldn't take care of for the first few hours of his trek. Unfortunately, his path led him right to a small band of raiders. Camped outside of an old Super-Duper Mart, he wasn't sure at first who they were, but a second of observation told him that normal folk didn't have mutilated corpses strung up by their camp. The area was completely open past the building, all the way to the Potomac river, and the only bridge nearby was in full view of their camp.

"_Four on one. Not good. But it looks like only one has a gun. Those others are packing melee only. But do they have anything hidden?_" It really didn't matter much what they had; if they had any friends inside, it would be way too much for him to handle. Going back to another intact bridge would require hours of backtracking, and there was too much light to make sneaking an option. Skipping the bridges and swimming through radioactive water was the worst idea he could figure out. After a moment's consideration, he noticed something useful not far from where he was hiding.

With a smile on his face and a plan in his head, he went to work. Once he'd retreated around the back side of the building, he rested for a few moments. After a drink from his water bottle and a quick stretch of his legs, he checked all his gear to make sure it was secure. Grabbing a random rock from the dirt, he snuck back to his original position and put his master plan into action.

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"Hey, KENNETH, pass me the damn bottle already."

"Shut the fuck up David. Call me Ken or I'll slit your throat."

"If you two don't shut the hell up, I swear I'll kill you both and just sit here with Will all day." Jesse wasn't the leader of this pathetic bunch, but he was the closest thing while the small group was on guard duty. Even though it was two hundred years old, the Super-Duper Mart had lots of food and had no major holes in its walls or ceiling, so a decent-sized band of raiders had decided to call it home. A good place to stash gear, wait for nearby caravans, and sleep when the sun was up.

Even the dumbest raiders posted sentries while they slept, and that's why the four-man group outside was sitting out in the hot sun. Few of them had guns; they mostly relied on numbers to take out their human prey. But their leader had made sure all his sentries had at least one firearm. Getting the hunting rifle that 'Jesse' was using and the cargo of the merchant who was carrying it had cost the life of one of their newest recruits, but it was worth it. The traveling merchant had been carrying enough good booze for the entire band to relax for a few days, and so the large bunch was mostly sleeping and drinking. Little did they know that a rather inexperienced young wanderer was about to inflict heavy casualties on them.

"PING!"

"What the hell was that?"

"Don't know. Maybe we finally got something to kill."

They all walked over to the old bus at the side of the parking lot. One of the annoyed raiders kicked the vehicle before they started moving around its side. "Ain't nothing here." A short burst of gunfire after that statement was the last thing the four ever heard.

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A single good throw was all it had taken to attract the raiders to the side of the old bus. Waiting until they were all nearly touching the vehicle, he sent a hail of gunfire into the approximate location of the bus's reactor. Several shots landed dead on, and a small mushroom cloud atomized all four of the morons.

Not waiting to see how long their friends would take to come out of the market, Michael dashed as fast as he could toward the bridge, not looking back for one moment. Thirty seconds later, he was halfway across while the other raiders had barely made it to the door of their evil lair. Using the rise on the far side of the bridge as cover, he laid down flat on his stomach and aimed down the sights of his rifle, hoping that the others hadn't noticed. He was just over a hundred yards away, but there was still a chance.

The few seconds that he might have been visible had been spent by the raiders staring at the nuclear fire surrounding the old bus's remains, and his distant hiding place wasn't suspected by a single one of them. Thirty minutes later, the large group posted a few new guards and went inside, pissed as hell that they couldn't find the bastard who'd taken out part of their group. Once the new sentries had sat down and started to chatter among themselves, he carefully crouched down and retreated to the safety of the ruins along the east bank of the river. "_Major luck that model was fusion powered. Hydrogen explodes, uranium rods don't._"

The sun was low on the horizon, and in a few hours he'd need to find a place to stop for the night. Gob had told the wanderer that the ruins completely blocked off surface travel in many areas, and he'd most likely have to use sewers or metro stations to reach Galaxy News Radio. Consulting his pre-war map back in Megaton had shown him a subway station, Farragut West Metro, on the very edge of the DC downtown area that looked not only like a promising start, but a good place to rest for the night. He guessed he was about an hour away, and he double-timed it all the way to the edge of the ruins.

Unfortunately, he had a new problem as soon as he got close to the station. A small group of men in strange black armor were standing right next to the entrance. They were heavily armed, mean-looking, and waiting for something. "_Don't look like raiders. Maybe some kind of mercenary faction?_"

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The wanderer's imperfect memory had forgotten one of the warnings given to him by Silver, and that was about a certain mercenary faction whose attitudes were only one step away from raiders. They were called the Talon Company. The color of a person's armor usually didn't mean much out in the wastes, given that everyone used what they could salvage. However, a black suit of heavy armor was a bit of a rarity, and it alerted the average wastelander to keep their distance. If they got close enough to see the company's symbol, a white talon on the armor's left breast, anyone who'd spent their life above the ground would either run or hide.

So when a person actually walked up toward them, even with his assault rifle pointed at the ground, it was enough to make two of them laugh. The small group's leader had a little more discipline, and his quick order of "Lock n' load!" was enough to send the other soldiers of fortune back into a serious state. Muttering under his breath, he said "_I cannot believe someone this stupid is actually alive._"

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Since the other men had only readied their rifles, Michael felt a moment's confidence as he approached the group. "Nice to see that there's still a few people willing to give others the benefit of the doubt."

Their leader eyed the wanderer for a moment. The kid fit the description of their latest contract, but one last thought went through his head before he engaged the lone wanderer in conversation. "_Let's see how dumb this guy is._"

"I could say the same about a kid like you. Most people either shoot at Talon mercs or just run away."

His poker face fluttered briefly, but Michael still managed to keep it in place. Silver's warnings about the Talon Company came back, and he moved his left hand slightly off his rifle, preparing to activate his secret weapon. "I'm trying to reach the Galaxy News Radio station. Don't suppose you guys know if this metro station goes that deep into DC?"

"Information without introductions? How rude."

He put on a quick forced smile. "Of course, of course. I'm Michael, and you are?"

"Your executioner." The last description in their contract was the name 'Michael', and the kid had gone for the bait. The three men brought their guns to bear on the young man simultaneously, but before the barrels were aligned with his body, his VATS came online and the world stopped for him.

Hyper-reflexes aside, his brain had already figured out that it would be impossible to kill all three before deactivation. Firing a few wild shots as he ran, he used what little time he had to dive into the stairs leading down to the subway station. Though he thought he was prepared for a tuck n' roll after the impact, an inconvenient garbage can in his way knocked him aside and sent his rifle spinning away from him.

One lucky shot had hit one of the mercs in his knee, but the other two were quick to react to the unusual scenario. Though not equipped with VATS modules, their reflexes were nothing to sneeze at, and a few seconds later they were already leaning over the side of the stairs, both aiming their weapons directly at their target. The unusual angle of impact had brought significant pain from his leg, and without thinking he used his extra time to clutch onto his limb instead of reaching for his weapon. The move temporarily saved his life, as the mercenaries would've shot him instantly if he'd gone for a weapon.

"FREEZE!"

The impact hadn't been so bad; the pain was already starting to dull significantly. He turned around with his hands in the air and looked up at the men. "What'd I do to you?"

"Not to us moron, we're mercs. It's what you did to someone with a lot of caps."

His memories about the Talon Company may have been fuzzy, but the only rich man he'd met was still fresh in his mind. "Mr. Burke, isn't it?"

"For once the target actually knows. You'd be surprised how many assholes don't even know who they pissed off."

"He offered me a bunch of caps to rig the bomb in Megaton to blow. I defused it instead. You know how many people are in that town?"

"And we give a shit why?"

The extra seconds of life Michael had bought with that short show of bravery turned out to be exactly what he needed. A strange sound erupted from somewhere nearby, and one of the men's heads suddenly had a giant hole in it. As his body fell over onto the lower platform Michael was standing on, the other turned and opened fire on the new adversaries, only to be silenced by a few more of the strange sounds. He heard the third wounded mercenary begging for his life, but the newcomers decided that a leg wound wasn't enough and fired several more times.

Turning for a moment, the wanderer noticed one strange thing about the corpse at his feet. Yeah, he had a big hole in his brains, but it was burned and smoking slightly. He could feel heat coming from it when he put his hand close. "_Incendiary rounds don't cause this kind of wound. What the hell are they packing?_" Quietly climbing to the top of the stairs after picking up his assault rifle, he snuck a quick peek over the low wall before ducking back in.

The new group was composed of two humans and a robot, though at first he wasn't sure if the two were humans. Their armor was so large and bulky it confused him for a second. He'd seen photos in the database of power armor before, but not with such strange markings all over. Blood red and black didn't exactly lend itself to camouflage, but with that kind of protection they didn't need it. The third being in the group was much more well known to him; it was something he'd actually had nightmares about as a kid.

Triangular treads. Gunmetal gray cylinder for the torso. Two tentacle like arms with graspers around the laser cannon assembly at the end of each arm. If that wasn't enough to make his nightmares come back, the clear tank on top of the assembly, filled with yellowish liquid and a floating brain, was the last piece needed. It was a Robobrain, the only known name for one of the most advanced robots before the war. What they actually called this class of cyborg, how the US Army scientists connected the brain to the robot's mechanical systems, and where they acquired the brains were all top secret before the war. The vault had only enough information to scare a kid who had decided to look up robots. Several nightmares had convinced him that the military selected random people based on some sort of hidden characteristic that made them optimal for the conversion. They had also convinced him that he was one of those unlucky people, and the haunting vision of his brain being removed by scientists, all while he was strapped down next to the brand new robot that was going to receive it, still gave him shudders a decade later.

"_A robobrain. Good god, I can't face that thing. Plus they have lasers. Burned through that guy's head and probably burned right through the armor on the others. They might hate Talon Company, but are they friendly or hostile toward random people?_"

"Come out slowly with your hands up, and maybe we won't kill you!"

He was about to find out. With his hands in the air, he slowly ascended the rest of the station's steps and faced his fears head on. With the robot slowly turning a circle as it surveyed the area, the two power armored soldiers approached the single survivor of their attack.

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"_Isn't wearing Talon armor. They were shooting at him. Probably means he's a good guy._"

"_I say we have some fun with him anyway. We got plenty of microfusion cells for our rifles, all we gotta do is tell him to run. If we can't hit him before he gets out of range, then he gets to live._"

"_You don't need anymore target practice, and we don't need anymore dead wastelanders. We may not be protecting them like those fools, but we don't wanna make 'em enemies. Low tech aside, there's strength in such massive numbers."_

_"Like anyone's gonna know."_

_"I've made a decision, so stow it private. We're moving on. The only hostile thing you get to do is talk down to him._"

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Though they weren't carrying a long range transmitter, their powered suits contained short range in-helmet radios which gave the two men the opportunity to discuss the situation without Michael hearing. He started to get a little worried after standing there for a full minute with his hands up while the two didn't move a muscle. The helmets on powered armor suits completely hid a person's face behind a wall of metal and two sunglasses-like eye holes, so for a bit he wondered if maybe their suits had simultaneously broken, leaving them as living statues. "_They just messing with me? Should I run for it?_"

With a harsh tone coming from the voice filter on his helmet, the commanding officer of the party said "All right civilian, it's your lucky day. Retrieve your weapon, but keep it down until we can't see each other anymore."

As the small group began to walk away, he was amazed to find that they were simply passing up the bodies, not even stopping to salvage anything. "Wait! Can I get a question or two out of you? Like why you saved me?"

The two armored monstrosities stopped and turned. "You were in the right place at the right time. We're on our way to investigate a rumor about a cache of pre-war tech, and we like Talon mercs as much as they like us."

"I don't have anything to reward you.... you killed them, why aren't you taking their stuff?"

"That shit might be worth something for you, but it's a BB gun to these." One of them held up his laser rifle and patted the side. "Take a look at those guys' armor."

He glanced briefly at the corpses of the mercenaries. Several of the glancing shots had failed to penetrate the thick combat armor completely, but the straight-on shots had burned right through almost instantly. "Wow. Got to get me one of those."

"It's worth way more to us than to you. Hey, wait a second. You up for a little trading?"

The other figure turned toward the man who'd been speaking. "Sir, why are we wasting our time with this caveman?"

The senior officer ignored the comment. "If you get lucky with finding any power armor or energy weapons, no matter how bad their condition is, we can give you a better deal than any merchants. Swing by our base with weapons down, tell them you're supposed to talk to Casdin, and our people might be able to do a little trade with you. You know where Fort Independence is?"

"If it existed before the war, it's on my pip-boy's map."

The man didn't speak for a second. "A functioning pip-boy? You out of a vault?"

"Your guy did call me a caveman. Sorry to disappoint, but I got kicked out. Wouldn't expect much in the way of trade from them, technology or otherwise. They really wanted to seal themselves up."

"Dammit. A working vault, and they close a dozen-odd tons of steel in our face. Where is it?"

Michael caught himself before he spoke up. Power armor and laser weapons were hard to come by; these guys probably had explosives too. Would they try to force the vault open for the stuff inside?

"I may have been kicked out, but I'm not going to hand them over on a platter to you."

A laugh erupted from the speaker on the private's helmet. Without waiting for an order, he pointed his laser rifle at the ground in front of Michael and fired. A quick flash and boom later, a small crater of melted cement appeared in front of the lone wanderer. "Them or you kid, take your pick."

The officer brought his rifle to bear, but not on Michael. He instead pointed it directly at the head of his subordinate. "Do that again and this little expedition will be one man short. Would you betray your brothers in the Citadel, even now?"

After a few moments, the private lowered his weapon, with the officer doing the same shortly after. "My offer still stands. You approach Fort Independence with your weapons down, and if you've got any tech we want, we'll give you far more than it's worth to wasteland traders. Until then, know that the Brotherhood Outcasts don't attack your kind, but we don't protect you either. Stay out the way of our patrols and you'll be fine."

The private gave one last comment before walking away. "Don't try attacking any of the rest of the outcasts or the citadel brotherhood for their stuff to trade. Even if you can defeat them, you won't be able to remove the markings they make on their weapons and armor, and we will kill you if you've killed our brothers."

Still standing motionless for a few seconds after they started walking away, Michael snapped back to his senses and walked down the subway station's stairs. "_Great. You finally get a suit that doesn't have a giant 101 on it, and then you start blabbing about your pip-boy. Are you trying to get your people killed?_" Letting his thoughts go, he examined the scene before him. His rifle was still in good shape, and he set it aside as he searched the first mercenary's corpse. Along with a combat knife, the man had a similar Chinese assault rifle, and was carrying three extra magazines besides the one in his weapon. Clearing out the ammo and putting it in his pack, he carried the weapons back up the steps and set them next to the other corpses.

The other two had combat knives as well, but in the category of firearms they were equipped with another Chinese assault rifle and some kind of combat shotgun. Unfortunately, a hit from one of the outcast's laser rifles had burned completely through the shotgun's drum magazine. The mercenary had a box of shells, but he didn't have an extra drum. "_Wonderful. My sawed-off will have a higher rate of fire than manually loading this thing after each shot._" But fortunately the shotgunner had two other items that Michael'd been waiting forever to get his hands on: fragmentation grenades. With a smile, he put the both of them on his belt.

With some strips from the dead men's non-armored clothing, he tied the two extra assault rifles and combat shotgun together, complete with a carrying strap on top. After putting the extra combat knives, shotgun shells, and excessive amounts of 5.56 ammunition into his pack, he filled up the makeshift bandoleer on the front of his armored suit with his remaining shotgun shells. Holding the strapped bundle with his left hand, he picked up his assault rifle with his right hand. Walking down into the metro station and through the rusty gates, he thought to himself "_Should I stash this much gear somewhere? Not like there's going to be any traders near Galaxy News._"

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It was dark, it was smelly, and it was dirty. The station's backup nuclear generator only had enough power left to keep a few of the lights on, but it was enough to see a tunnel filled with trash and debris. Still, the structure was intact, and after a few corners he had arrived at the stairs down to the main platform. It was completely blocked by a cave-in. Without thinking, he yelled "Dammit!" A strange raspy howl alerted him, and he froze, carefully setting his salvage bundle down as he brought his second hand to the grip of his now-raised assault rifle.

It had come from a nearby maintenance passage, who's door was being rattled by some kind of creature. He slowly and carefully walked to the door, assault rifle at the ready. Seeing no hinges on this side of the door, he realized that the creature was banging against a door that it had to pull open. An evil smile on his face, he put a swift kick into the door next to its knob. A one-second glance through the now open door showed a strange humanoid figure tumbling down a long series of steps.

With the most unusual cry he'd ever heard, it rose to its feet and ran up the stairs at him. Without one concern for the thing's life, he let a three round burst into its torso, sending it for a second time to the bottom of the stairs. Pausing for a moment, he watched as the injured creature got to its feet and attempted to climb the stairs once again, albeit limping this time.

"_Isn't there any survival instinct in that brain?_" he thought to himself as he aimed his rifle at the head of his new friend. One careful shot later, the creature was permanently laid to rest and Michael proceeded downward to examine the newly dead specimen. As he'd guessed, the thing was one of the feral ghouls that he'd been warned about. "_I thought they said these things hang out in groups._"

As if some angry god of ghouls heard his thoughts, the ghouls attracted by the gunshots all chose that moment to let out their raspy howls. Looking up at the massive number of shadows running out of the darkness, he ran as fast as he could up the stairs backwards, firing with as much accuracy as he could muster in such a situation.

The safeties on his VATS hadn't expired since his fight with the Talon crew, so he improvised. Waiting until all (or at least he hoped that was all) of the creatures had made it onto the stairs, he let the last of his magazine's rounds fly into the legs of the creatures in the lead. Falling like pins at a bowling alley, they rolled down the stairs and brought all the others to the ground with them. Using the precious seconds to put as much extra distance between himself and the creatures as possible, he lobbed one of his new grenades into the mass and reloaded his rifle. The explosion blew several ghouls apart, but the dead ones had shielded the others from most of the blast, and the injured ones seemed to feel no pain. He began to aim for each head as they got back up. Less than half his rounds hit their targets, and there were still five left alive after he ran dry again.

With no time to reload, he dropped his rifle and withdrew his sawed-off shotgun in one fluid motion. Putting one shell each into the torso of the two closest ghouls, he dropped it and tried to pull the submachine gun from his hip.

A lucky swipe, originally intended for the human's chest, knocked the weapon away from him before he could pull the trigger. Confronted with three ghouls, he put a kick into the one who'd disarmed him. Drawing his combat knife, he ducked around its next attack and put his blade in its back, right into its spinal cord. The one in a million stab instantly paralyzed the ghoul from the neck down, but it did nothing to either of the ghouls left.

Both creatures jumping at him, he brought the knife around and stabbed the closest ghoul in the eye socket as it flew toward him. With both the dead and alive hitting him simultaneously, he was knocked to the cement floor, temporarily stunned as the back of his head hit the ground. The still moving of the two quickly sank its jaw into his left arm. The broken bone he'd received in Megaton had healed enough to avoid a re-break, but the amount of force a human jaw can bring to bear was more than enough to put a deep gash in his arm.

The ghoul screamed loudly in satisfaction as it tasted blood, but Michael screamed louder. His anger and pain combined let a powerful right cross into the ghoul's face, and a swift knee knocked the creature aside. Drawing the combat knife from the other ghoul's eye, he plunged it with all his might into the forehead of the smiling creature. It was strange. The pain, the adrenaline, seeing his own blood dripping from the thing's mouth.... but on top of it all was the fact that a taste of human flesh had actually made it smile right before he killed it. His mind was a little burned out at the moment.

Pulling himself back up, he noticed the ghoul he'd paralyzed a short while earlier. Moaning and screaming was all it could do, but that was more than enough to anger the injured wanderer. With an angry cry, he brought his boot down on the thing's head, crushing it like an egg. "_Rest in peace. Or at least for good._"

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Quickly finding his submachine gun, he sat back against the tunnel wall while watching the darkness. One might think that removing a backpack and finding a stim is impossible with one hand holding a weapon and the other barely functioning, but the wanderer managed. Forgoing med-x for the short term, he injected a stimpack into the wound and retrieved his other weapons before walking back to the station's entrance. More cloth stripped from the dead mercenaries provided a suitable bandage.

After searching the station's entrance area, he found a small office used by Metro staff before the war. It wasn't much of a resting spot, but the sun had started to go down, and a little extra sleep was necessary after a day like this one. With nothing critical left to do, he set his bag on the floor, injected a small dose of med-x into his arm, and started to take a more thorough look around the office.

There was an old protectron robot in a pod in the office's far corner, and he briefly considered reactivating it to protect his sleeping form. As well, a small computer terminal on the desk nearby was still functional. Though he was a bit inexperienced, the programs Stanley had helped him create back in the vault were very helpful, and within ten minutes he had cracked the computer's codes.

Breifly skimming over the data, he noticed a pre-war map of the whole metro network. Even with the main tunnel collapsed, the maintenance passage where the ghouls had made their camp was intact, at least partially. Plotting a route to the open area near Galaxy News Radio, he saw that the maintenance passage ran almost all the way there. Taking it would require him to traverse only a short portion of actual subway tunnel at the end before exiting at one "Tenleytown/Friendship Station". It was almost on the opposite side of the area that Gob had marked, but at least he'd be able to navigate the rest of the way there on the surface.

While downloading the map to his pip-boy, he tried to think of something that would help him against so many ghouls. The answer turned out to be right in front of him. Using the terminal's wireless link, he wiped the ticket taking program from the robot and then opened the pod. The protectron took a few steps forward, stopped, and warbled in its synthesized voice "Awaiting orders."

After a moment's thought, Michael responded with "There are currently evil communists in the metro network. Fortunately they are wearing outfits that make them look very different from other humans." He led the robot into the entrance tunnel and showed him the ghoul corpses.

"Your secondary objective is to seek and destroy any hostile beings who are similar to these. Your primary objective is to scout and clear a safe path through the tunnels so military reinforcements can reach...." he paused to look at his pip-boy. "Tenleytown/Friendship Station. Is this understood?"

As expected, the general anti-communist programming given to robots before the war was present even in this model. With a "Yes sir!", the robot began to walk down the passage's stairs, standard laser weapons raised. "_Like to see how those zombies stack up against nightvision and lasers._"

Walking back into the office, he set the rest of his gear down and examined the room, trying to think how he could make it more secure. Given only one entrance, all that it took to make the place a little safer was sliding a desk in front of the metal door. "_Break that down without waking me up, retarded corpses._"

First he started with an appetizer: purified water and a withdrawal pill. For the main course, he pulled a tin of Cram from his bag and tuned his pip-boy to Galaxy News Radio. Even underground, he was now close enough to the station that there was much less static on the airwaves. Munching quietly, he listened to the words of Three Dog in between the classics of the 2070's. "_Sounds like a good guy. Hope he's got as much knowledge of the wastes as he claims._"

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With a satisfying yawn, Michael found himself awakening inside of a dingy metro station. After a quick bite of Pork n' Beans, he started to stretch, but a strange sensation on his back made him stop. It wasn't pain.... he wasn't sure what it was. Removing the top half of his jumpsuit, he felt a strange blister on his back. "_Oh fuck. Turning into a ghoul or spending the night with kevlar rubbing against me?_" Putting his shirt back on, he decided to turn his attention toward things he could actually fix at the moment.

After checking his arm, he found it functional and virtually pain-free after the night's rest. It still needed to heal a little more, so he decided it wasn't going to hurt him at all to keep a few strips of cloth over the wound for another day. He hoisted his gear and pushed the desk out of the door's way. Hands on his assault rifle and feet stepping around dead ghouls, he carefully made his way down through the tunnels. Even fewer of the station lights were working this far underground, and there weren't very many lights to begin with in these barely-used areas two hundred years ago. He turned up the brightness on his pip-boy's screen to its maximum. It didn't make much of a difference, but it would have to do until he found a different light source.

The protectron had done a very good job. Although he'd already attracted and killed most of the nearby ghouls yesterday, the robot had followed his directions and obliterated everything in a wide path toward his destination. Most of the time he checked his subway map only for reference, given that recently deceased ghouls were obvious markers. His luck eventually ran out, and after awhile he found a small group of ghouls surrounding a seriously torn up robot.

Even after so many hours, the ghouls were still clawing at the machine, trying to find something edible in that casing. Since they hadn't noticed him, he decided to try saving a little 5.56mm ammo. He set down his bundle and assault rifle quietly before drawing his submachine gun. Edging his way to an optimal firing position, he set down his shotgun right in front of himself before steadying his submachine gun with both hands. A few short bursts was all it took to kill most of the bunched-up group of undead. Picking off the rest until only two were left, he picked up his sawed-off and waited a few seconds with a smile on his face.

As soon as the last two had nearly reached him, he let a load of shot into each of their torsos, sending them flying back. Yelling "Yeah Motherfucker!", he snapped the weapon open and reloaded both barrels quickly. Snapping up the 10mm SMG, he put a new magazine into the gun and waited for a few seconds, listening to see if any ghouls nearby felt like joining the party.

After no sounds, footsteps, or strange howls went out, he put his weapons back in their places and searched the ripped-up robot. The ghouls had done a thorough job over the last few hours, and most of its components were scattered over the area. The only things he could find was a bank of partially charged small energy cells for its lasers and a fission battery. Stowing his new toys, he started back on his journey through the underground.

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"You wanted to speak with me sir?"

"Yes. Chief, I'm going to be needing three of your officers to conduct an important job outside their traditional duties."

The new vault government in 101 had reduced the powers of the overseer, but he still maintained control over the vault's security forces. In theory, the officers were supposed to be loyal to the new government first and their commander in chief second, but old habits die hard, and Alphonse was ready to use his position to regain any of his power that he could.

"Exactly what kind of job are we talking about sir?"

"Simple surveillance. In order for the loyalty of the councilors to be assured, I will be needing general reports on them. Daily activities, who could be considered their close friends, et cetera. The details are irrelevant; you should be able to figure out what is and isn't important."

Chief Hannon had been one of the angrier residents after the escape of James and Michael, but he still put some of the blame on Thomas and his all-powerful attitude. The idea seemed to be one step toward a different dictatorship.

"Exactly what do you mean by loyalty sir?"

"I must prevent them from exploiting their new power to their own ends. Who knows what kind of damage they could cause unchecked. I will need such information to make the vault safer."

"Aren't you exploiting your powers right now? Any extra information could allow you to block their influence or even render the council powerless. This government is supposed to minimize the power of any one individual."

Somehow managing to keep that sinister smile on his face, the overseer responded "Assign the three officers as you see fit, but make sure they are close enough to the subjects so as to not arouse suspicion. For instance, Chip Taylor's grandfather is officer Taylor, which makes him an optimal candidate for that position. Get to it now. You are dismissed."

After the officer left, Alphonse poured himself a drink and began to think about the situation. "_Stupid bastard. I make him chief all those years ago and this is how he repays me? Very well, there are other ways to assure that the council's powers are minimalized._"

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The ghouls close to his exit station were relatively spread out, and Michael was able to use his Chinese assault rifle without fear of being overrun. Slowly moving along the tracks leading up to the station's surface entrance, he froze for a moment. There were a few ghouls spread out over the underground platform, but there was also something big, green, and ugly standing near the track's entrance to the open area.

"_A super mutant hanging out in a pack of ghouls. Great. No gun, but that board's got a lot of nails in it. Sadistic bastard._" Setting down his package and backpack, he checked his rifle one more time. Carefully sneaking as close as he could, he waited until he was less than twenty feet from the creature before pouring half a clip into the back of its left leg.

Howling in pain, the newly crippled mutant turned around toward the source of his assailant. A stupid grin on its face, it pulled a hidden grenade from its tattered clothes and reached for the pin.

Activating his VATS module just in time, he let the rest of his clip fly directly into the other hand of the creature, blowing several fingers off. With no other hand to pull the pin, the enraged creature dropped the unarmed explosive and charged toward the wanderer, ignoring its crippled leg.

Left with an empty assault rifle, he drew his sawed-off and waited for the perfect moment. As the super mutant raised his arm high to swing his nail-studded board, Michael put both shells directly into its elbow. At this range, the weapon left little more than a few green shreds connecting both halves of the arm. Even the giant creature couldn't take the pain from the improvised amputation, and it fell face first to the ground.

The severely injured beast turned over just in time to see Michael finish putting two new shells into his weapon. Holding the shotgun just over the creature's face, he let a shell fly into its forehead.

Sprayed with the strangest gore, he froze for a moment before hearing the raspy cry of a nearby ghoul. Attracted by the battle, it was now running full tilt toward the wanderer. A smile on his face, he let his sawed-off's second shell into the ghoul before retrieving his Chinese assault rifle. With a just in time reload on his part, his weapons coughed several more rounds before the station was once more quiet.

After a quick retrieval of the mutant's grenade and his abandoned supplies, he proceeded up the stairs toward the station entrance Refilling the clips on his belt and the shells on his bandoleer from inside his pack, he walked toward the rusty gates, the bright sun once again shining into his eyes.

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Finally deep into the ruins, he emerged from the station to find another day in the former capitol. It was strange to say the least, being surrounded by so many ruined and crumbling buildings. He checked his pip-boy again and locked onto the station's signal, giving him a direction to walk. After only a minute, two super mutants appeared right around a corner. They were equipped with old bolt-action hunting rifles, but he was equipped with an automatic assault rifle. Ducking for cover, the first shots from the two missed, and as they cocked the bolts he stood up and let a careful burst into one of their faces.

"_What a wonderful day_" he thought to himself as the face of the nearest mutant literally exploded. With the other mutant recoiling from the sudden spray, it was almost too easy to take it down. A moment of looking around and reloading later, he approached the corpses. A few minutes of searching the green corpses produced less than he'd hoped for.

"_Two crappy rifles, straight into the package. A bunch of .32 rounds, straight into the bag. Why can't these guys have more grenades?_" His musings were cut short by the sound of an assault rifle being cocked behind him. "_This is getting really repetitive._"

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Growing up in the Brotherhood of Steel was like winning the lottery. You lived in fortified bases, drank and ate the purest food and water in the wasteland, and received the finest education and training available after the bombs fell. Sarah Lyons was one of those people. Her father, known as Elder Lyons, was the leader of the capital wasteland's detachment of the Brotherhood of Steel, and he'd seen to it that his daughter received even more attention in her youth than the other children. She'd grown up to be one of the best soldiers in the brotherhood, or at least she thought.

The young blonde woman was quite beautiful for her age, but under her skin was hidden an unbelievably overconfident individual who'd recruited the best of the best into her platoon. Called the Lyons Pride, they were unequivocally the best group the brotherhood could bring to bear. Minus one member anyway. Her father had made sure that she got everyone of the best men and women for her unit, not just because he needed a special operations group, but because he was worried about his pampered daughter.

Elder Lyons had been accused several times, by both common privates and high-ranking officers, of exhibiting favoritism when it came to his daughter. It was a bit of a joke to them that the elder had allowed Sarah to lead the new group, given both her mediocre test scores and average combat rating after years of special training. However, she still made a decent leader, and most of the Brotherhood had begun to accept her unusually high rank.

The other member of Lyons Pride had been personally briefed by Elder Lyons before they joined the group, and they all knew that the old man wanted them to let her lead them around while they did their job. He was concerned about his daughter, but he was guarding her with the Brotherhood's best, and letting her out of the Citadel base for patrol duty calmed all of the soldiers who were jealous of her special treatment. Super mutant activity had increased recently around Galaxy News Radio, and though the brotherhood didn't really care about Three Dog's broadcasts, they did use his building as a forward outpost in the city ruins. Sarah saw the situation as the perfect chance to give their newest inductee a final test before making her a permanent member of the Pride.

With no other units in the immediate area, hearing gunfire was a bit unexpected. Carefully tracking the source, they found a human kneeling over two super mutant corpses, searching for anything of value. "_Strange armor. No markings, no merc symbols. And all alone? How the hell is he still alive in these ruins?_" She wasn't wearing her helmet, so quiet radio was out of the question, but it didn't take a genius to understand her hand signals. Sneaking up behind the lone man, they simultaneously brought their weapons to bear. As part of her test, their group's initiate was only issued an R91 assault rifle, and the sound of the bolt alerted him to their presence.

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Slowly turning around with his hands in the air, he was surprised to see four figures in powered armor. The symbols on them were not the same as the so-called outcasts he'd encountered earlier. The woman wearing no helmet was the one who started asking questions. "Who are you?"

"I'm Michael. You guys are the regular brotherhood?"

"Regular brotherhood? What are you talking about?"

"Well, you don't look like those outcasts. You're the ones who actually give a shit about other people, right?"

She smiled. "Right. Why are you so deep into the ruins? And alone at that?"

"I have to talk to Three Dog. He's the most likely person to know where my father is."

"You must really be worried about him to come here alone."

A slight grimace crossed his face as he said "You could say that."

After a moment's silence, Sarah said "Our objective is to clear this area. We're headed for a little resting and reloading at Galaxy News Radio right now. If you want to follow us, we don't mind, but let us take point and stay out of our line of fire."

"Sweet." Picking up his bundle, he began to trudge behind them, still keeping his assault rifle ready. They may have been 'Knights of Steel' to the wastelanders he'd met, but they couldn't be invincible. He was not going to be some mutant's easy meal of the day.

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The beginning of the journey through the ruins was fairly uneventful for Michael. The Pride managed to drop most of the mutants fairly quickly, as several laser rifles focused on the same target meant a quick death. Just like the outcasts, they always passed up the mutant's supplies. Even avoiding the numerous melee implements used by the majority of mutants, his bundle was now almost too heavy. He'd added two more Chinese assault rifles to his stash, not to mention massive amounts of ammo and another four grenades. He loosened the bundle's strap and swung it over his backpack.

Another short battle erupted a few seconds later, and Michael finally got a chance to (or at least was forced to) join the fight. When the two lead soldiers both ran their microfusion cells dry at the same time, they simultaneously ducked and reached for new cells. The lack of fire encouraged the group of mutants engaging them, and several stood up and opened fire. Seeing no adequate response from the brotherhood, Michael let two grenades go simultaneously with the yell "Frag out!" Amazingly the mutants seemed to understand his words, and they tried to run before the weapons exploded. It was a wasted effort, as the grenades exploded less than a foot away before they could turn around.

The mutants' weapons had been literally blown out of their hands. The soldiers were amazed to hear the wanderer use a professional military term to alert them; they'd expect something stupid like "Fire in the hole!" from the average wastelander. Letting him walk forward, they watched Michael approach the single live mutant with his rifle raised. Pausing for a moment, Michael took what appeared to be a makeshift claymore blade from a mutant's severed arm. It was eight feet long and tremendously heavy, but he simply couldn't resist using it on the dying mutant. With a cry of "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" he severed the survivor's head from its body.

One of the knights asked "What the hell was that all about?"

Michael dropped the heavy weapon and picked his assault rifle back up. "Just playing around."

Sarah walked toward him. "I know that movie. But how the hell do you?"

With his best poker face in place and another series of expletives going through his brain, he said "My home town had some pre-war tech, including an old holo-tape collection of cinema classics."

She turned toward her group. "Pride, take a breath. Drink some water and check your weapons now." Wheeling back around to the wanderer, she said "Didn't get a chance to introduce myself. It's Michael, right? I'm Sarah Lyons."

During a handshake with the woman's armored gauntlet he said "A pleasure. I assume you're the leader of this group?"

"I'm surprised you haven't heard of me. Not trying to be self-centered, but we're the best of the brotherhood, and I'm the one who runs the show."

"I've kinda been under a rock most of my life."

"What do you mean?"

Shifting his weapon bundle, he did his best to avoid talking about the vault. "I mean that I'm not really up on current events. My home was a little isolated."

She smiled and shouldered her rifle. As if she was giving out psychic commands, the other members of the group rose up and put their helmets back on. "Pride, move out!" Right behind them, he shouldered his gear and put two hands on his rifle. "_Wonderful conversation. But these people are supposed to be the good guys anyway._"

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After carefully maneuvering down a small alley, the group ended up near a massive building. Roofless and broken down, it was home to at least one super mutant, as evidenced by the assault rifle fire from the second floor window. All it took was one careful shot by one of the group's members before there was a new smoking hole in the creature's cranium. "Definitely more inside ma'am, but they're going to keep their heads down. Probably try and surprise us with a little close-quarters action, given most of them are packing melee weapons."

Sarah responded rather quickly to the situation. "We're hear to clean out mutants, and that's what we're going to do. Rest on the other side people, we're almost to the station." She turned back toward Michael. "You should wait here."

"No way. You've helped me so much, the least I can do is cover your asses in there. My weapon might not shoot lasers, but these bullets still work well."

A strange expression crossed her face, one that Michael wasn't really sure what it meant. She turned toward the building. "Move out. Stay close, and watch your backs."

The trek through the building brought several more mutant corpses down, but Sarah found it hard to pay attention. The wanderer was just strange enough to make her intrigued. The heavy number of weapons in that bundle on his back confirmed what she suspected were muscles under his strange armor. He had no scars on him, no sign of disease or radiation poisoning, and a pristine body that looked as though it had never been in the wasteland before. With a functional wrist computer, decent manners, and significant pre-war knowledge, it was a safe bet that he'd had an education in a well-equipped community. "_Tough, healthy, and educated? Just who the hell are you?_"

Risking another glance back at him, all she saw was the back of his head and an outstretched arm as he said "Frag out!" One second later, a deafening BOOM went off, and chunks of two super mutants flew out from behind a low wall. A third stumbled out, badly wounded, and before anyone else could react Michael put a burst of 5.56 ammo into its face.

It wasn't just Sarah, the entire group was surprised that a lone individual could do this well. "How the hell'd you know they were there?"

"Swore I heard one of those things chuckle. Don't know how they circled around us."

Before his helmeted companions could turn back, a large group of super mutants emerged from their hiding places and opened fire. The creatures weren't as dumb as they looked; the three recently deceased mutants had been part of an ambush. As they dived for cover, Michael activated his VATS, and the whole world stopped.

Quickly targeting the mutants as he ran sideways, the extra time given to him was just enough for two headshots. As the safeties engaged, his remaining time was spent randomly firing toward a third mutant. During his split-second burst of superhuman speed only one thought went through his head. "_Damn rifle's practically semi-auto at this speed._"

When a human runs across a large room in less than a second, it's generally enough to distract most people nearby. With both sides temporarily confused, he swore as he reloaded his rifle. "Fucking fire already!"

Assault rifles against lasers was a one-sided deal, and the few bullets that hit their targets glanced off the reinforced suits. The remaining mutants dropped, and as soon as the knights turned their attention from the creatures, they all began to think one thing. "_How the hell did that guy do that?_" Questions would have to wait, as the sound of a major battle suddenly started going off in the distance. One of the helmeted knights said "Sentinel, we've got a major attack on the front of Galaxy News."

"We got about a hundred yards to go, double time people!" The group began to run through the structure, barely stopping at corners. Fortunately all of the mutants left in the building had gathered for that final ambush, so it only took them about sixty seconds to reach the back of the building.

Quickly exiting the structure, they found themselves at the opposite end of the small square Galaxy News Radio was on. A crowd of mutants were opening fire on three paladins, and one of them suddenly went down after a lucky hit found its way between the armor's plates. Without a single word, the Pride moved forward, Michael on their rear, clearing the square in less than a minute.

"All right! We toasted those muties!" Even through the voice filters, Michael could tell that this now not-so-silent member of Lyon's Pride was definitely a woman. She let off a burst of assault rifle fire into the air.

Instead of Sarah, another one of the helmeted figures responded. "Initiate Reddin, knock that off. You're wasting ammo."

"Aww, we just kicked their asses Vargas, come on!"

"We need to secure the area. You really think that was all the mutants in DC? Take the east side, I'll take the west."

"Fine...."

Letting the Brotherhood fan out across the area, he moved toward the building, set his gear down, and approached the three members of the brotherhood at the entrance. The two undamaged soldiers were standing over their third wounded companion, trying to remove his chest plate.

"Get his helmet off first." For some reason, the two listened to Michael, and a few seconds later they'd pulled away the metal mask. The man inside coughed up blood and groaned. Before his brothers did anything, Michael removed a stimpack from his pocket and carefully injected it into the injured man's neck. "That'll stabilize him until you can get this armor off, but I'd still hurry if I was you."

Walking back over to the center of the square, he was caught in conversation by Lyons.

"Honestly can't believe you'd use one of your own stimpacks on a person you didn't know."

"If you knew me a little better, you'd be aware that I can't get over being Santa Claus."

"You're too nice to be a raider and too well trained to be a regular wastelander. Are you a merc or something?"

"Nope. Just a guy trying to figure out why his dad ran out of town without telling anyone."

"Well, I hope Three Dog can tell...."

It was if a small earthquake went off. Then another, and then another. They were slowly growing louder and stronger, and somewhere in the background an amazingly loud roar sounded. For the first time today, Michael saw fear in Sarah's eyes.

"It's a behemoth! Pack it in and fall back!"

Before he could ask what a behemoth was, a ten meter tall super mutant appeared from around the corner of a building. It was wielding what appeared to be a metal telephone pole with a fire hydrant on its end, and its left arm was covered by a gigantic metal shield that would likely withstand a missile, to say nothing of rifle fire. With an angry roar, it kicked a nearby bus toward the closest brotherhood member, known to the wanderer only as Initiate Reddin.

There was no chance for the newest member of Lyon's pride; she was carried by the flying bus until it hit a wall, most likely crushing even the tough powered armor she was wearing. As if some deity hated her, the bus exploded on impact, sending a miniature shockwave through the area. With everyone opening fire immediately, Michael figured that the creature would go down fairly quickly. He was very wrong; the behemoth's thick skin seemed to soak up every bullet and laser blast as if nothing was hitting it.

Choosing Sarah Lyons next, it charged toward the Pride's young leader, swinging its weapon and roaring loud enough to make a person deaf. It swung several times, missing the smaller target as the motionless woman continued to pump more and more laser fire into the creature. "_Why isn't she running? Or at least moving? She's practically standing still! That thing is going to fuck her up!_"

On the creature's third swing, it managed to take a bench with it, sending the heavy object flying into the Sentinel. A normal person's bones would have been crushed on impact, but her power armor held. Stunned after flying ten feet sideways, she looked up to see the mutant extending a free hand toward its latest snack.

With a BOOM, an explosion went off less than a meter from the creature's head. Turning, both steel knight and behemoth saw Michael holding a frag grenade in his hand. Pulling the pin and letting the safety lever fly, he let the grenade cook for a moment before tossing it up at the mutant. Once again an explosion went off right next to its face, and the distracted mutant roared, forgetting its snack and turning its attention to this new threat.

Turning and running when he saw the mutant charging, Michael dove under the building's overhang right before the mutant reached him. It tried to reach under, but its body was too massive for such a small space. Howling in anger, it turned around and looked for its previous prey, but Sarah had finally figured out how to take cover. For now, all the creature could do was punch in the sides of the nearest building that had laser fire coming out of its windows.

His head right next to the removed helmet of the previously injured knight, Michael heard a brief radio transmission. "_Somebody get to the crate and use that fat man!_" Running on autopilot at the moment, he sprinted over to the crate at the entrance to Galaxy News Radio. The container had massive amounts of ammo and weapons, but something lying on top of the arm's stash caught his eye.

It looked like some kind of pneumatic launcher, with rails extending several feet to guide the projectile. "_What the hell is this potato gun going to do to that thing?_" Taking a second look inside the crate, he found several objects that looked like miniature versions of the bomb in the center of Megaton. "_Sweet. These better be what I think they are._"

Pulling the safety tab from the base of one of them, he heard a click inside the miniature nuke as the light on its nose lit up softly. Placing the projectile inside the rails of the so-called "Fat Man", he sighted the behemoth and pulled the trigger.

The launcher's power was pathetically less than what Michael had anticipated, and the nuke landed almost thirty feet short of the creature. The behemoth was hit by some heat and pressure by nearby blast, but it wasn't enough to cause actual damage. Turning around to find the source of its new attacker, it paused just long enough for the wanderer to reload the device. This time aiming at a much higher angle, he let the second nuke fly.

The shot couldn't have been more perfect. The small projectile impacted on the creature's chest, and a spark of nuclear fire erupted over the beast. Even its super dense skin, hardened by mutation and exposure to the wasteland, was no match for the miniature sun that formed on its body. With a bright flash, the behemoth flew back and hit the ground, a massive crater in its chest. No blood came from the wound; its heart had been vaporized and any blood vessels leading to the wound's edge had been sealed by the burst of several million degrees of heat. A stench worse than any garbage burner permeated the air, and the wanderer caught himself wishing that he hadn't roasted the behemoth.

The situation was unreal to Michael. He'd just gotten used to killing super mutants a little while ago. Then out of nowhere a giant monster came stomping through the square and he'd been forced to use tactical nukes to bring it down. With the now-empty launcher still on his shoulder, he stared at the behemoth's corpse while the brotherhood members regrouped in front of Galaxy News Radio.

Sarah Lyons stepped away from the crowd and right up to him. "Civilian, you've shown great skill and cunning today. It is an honor to be able to tell people that I've fought alongside you. Name the reward I can give you for your help."

He thought about it for a few seconds. "If I ever manage to find a suit of power armor, would you show me how to use it?"

A small laugh erupted from the group of soldiers, but Sarah's voice wasn't among them. Contrary to her subordinates' expectations, she said "Not just teach. We keep several extra suits inside our outpost here. Come inside and I'll see if we've got one we can spare."

Watching the lone wanderer follow Sentinel Lyons inside, the soldiers murmured to each other. True, this man had done some great things today, but power armor training? Such an honor was reserved for the Brotherhood; a number of their lower ranking members were untrained and only using military combat armor. Still, she not only was the highest ranking officer present, but her father was the leader of the entire capital wasteland contingent of the Brotherhood of Steel. If she wanted something, it happened.

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He's finally reached Galaxy News Radio, and even if Three Dog doesn't know anything, he's become a friend of one of the most influential people in the wasteland. Nuking gigantic mutants often does impress people. Will he get a chance to work for the brotherhood in the future? Will Galaxy News Radio hold the key to finding his father? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!

P.S. - I always thought someone in Sarah Lyons' position would be a daddy's girl. I mean, what are the odds that the leader's daughter is the one who's the best in the Brotherhood? :)

P.P.S. - Many thanks to Private 1st Class Martin R. for sending me some great combat information, including the stuff about how you're supposed to yell frag out. Keep working it over there, we all appreciate it, and I know those folks do too.


	13. You're a Crazy Bitch

(After a blown power supply and months of negotiating via snail mail and telephone, I've finally got a working computer again, and I didn't have to pay a cent! Sorry for the wait, but it couldn't be helped. I just can't write without a keyboard in front of me.)

Continuing his journey through the wasteland, our hero has gotten into quite a few scrapes since he left Megaton. Luck and skill combined have gotten him to the front door of Galaxy News Radio alive, but it was all luck when he got a powerful reward from the Brotherhood Sentinel name Sarah Lyons. Will a new friend in the Brotherhood give him an advantage in the future? Is Three Dog going to know anything, or have all his radio reports been second-hand news? And will any of his information be useful after all the time Michael spent in Megaton, or has the trail gone cold?

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Chapter 13 – You're a Crazy Bitch

It wasn't every day that a wastelander had the opportunity to work with the Brotherhood of Steel. It also wasn't every day that particular wastelander saved one of the brotherhood's leaders. Michael'd only asked for power armor training, but Sentinel Lyons had decided to give him a suit too. In different ways, both of them had gotten very lucky today.

Leading Michael toward one of the side rooms in the building, she heard him gasp as he entered the outpost's armory. The massive number of weapons, including another "Fat Man", lined two walls. Crates of ammunition were stacked everywhere. A double row of at least a dozen mini nukes was on a nearby shelf. To top it all off, one wall of the room had several sets of power armor hanging on it. "Impressed?"

"Wow. I've never seen this much firepower before, even in the database."

"Database?" One slip up on Michael's part sent more questions through her head and more anger through his.

"_Dammit! I am practically advertising the vault!_"

"_Database.... his home town had a functional computer network?_"

Both looking silently at one another, doing their best to siphon information from the silence. After several seconds Sarah decided to speak.

"Lately Three Dog's been going on about some kind of SupermanTM who came out of a vault, ready for war and on a quest to find his dad. You're not up to date on the wasteland; in fact you seem to know nothing about what's going on in the world. You're well trained and educated to a degree that no other wastelander can claim. Your home was in an isolated area and it had a lot of pre-war technology, even a computer network and database. For me, the last thing is when you said you'd lived under a rock your whole life."

"You could've been a detective. I'm obviously not going to confirm anything, so why don't you tell me what you're thinking?"

"You're a vault dweller. Somewhere there's a functioning vault, and you just left it a while back. Is that why you're looking for your dad? He ran out and you're going after him?"

He paused for a second. "If I was from a vault, having other people know about it would be dangerous. I can't list how many people or factions would want to force their way into a pristine vault."

"Then you're not from a vault."

He looked at her for a second before he got the insinuation. "Thank you."

"No problem. Now help me take your new suit off the wall."

The Sentinel spent hours teaching the wanderer how to use the new armor. Controlling the motors that gave the suit its strength was an exceptional difficulty for new users. Michael was surprised that she was spending so much time making sure he got the little details down; he'd expected her to run off as soon as she'd taught him the basics. She went over everything, no matter how insignificant: the history of different versions of power armor, the fact that they'd welded long lasting fusion packs into these older T-45 suits to avoid using so many energy cells, how the main force of the Brotherhood had found and still used the better T-51 versions out on the west coast. Twice Paladin Vargas attempted to interrupt, and twice Sarah sent him away. After a long time, he began to wonder if there was really anything left to learn. It was at that moment that she stopped and said "That's as good as I can do. You're ready for war."

"Why'd you help me with this so much? Why'd you give me a suit? I mean, these things are rare and valuable. I can understand gratitude, but anyone can launch nukes out of that "Fat Man" thing. And you could've ran out on me at least an hour ago, before you started teaching me all these extra things."

She smiled. "I'd be a snack right now if you had backed off like everyone else. I got lucky with you coming to my rescue, so I figure you should get lucky."

He burst out laughing and said "Now that's my kind of reward!"

"What?"

"Uh.... just playing around. Really."

Every single person she'd ever been around was a member of the brotherhood, and such a comment to a superior officer would have been viewed as harassment within the ranks. Also, being the daughter of the guy in charge meant any man would be afraid to even think such things around her. After leading such an isolated life, it was the first time someone had ever said anything of the sort to her.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't understand your question."

A cross look went over her face. "When you said 'that's my kind of reward', what did you mean?"

"Uh.... well.... since the 'get lucky' phrase is a double entendre for sex, I was saying that would be a good reward."

"What? That's what you want out of me?" Such a forward comment left her confused. She stormed out of the armory before Michael could respond, leaving the next part of their conversation to thoughts.

"_What the hell was she doing? That was in the top ten of the most fucked-up conversations I've ever had. Was she teasing me or what? If she was, she's a pro with the innocent act._"

"_I can't believe that just happened. He actually said to my face that he wanted to have sex with me. Guys don't just do that!_"

Bringing his new suit fully online, he pursued the Sentinel up to the building's balcony. "Hold on! Please let me explain!"

She wheeled around on him so suddenly that he jerked back, letting the heavy suit pull him to the ground. Watching him slowly rise to his feet, she said "Fine. Explain."

"It was just a laugh at the situation. Stuff like that is funny if you think about it. You shouldn't be so offended."

"How could I not be? You requested sex from me and we barely know each other. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I was joking around, if you really want to run with it you should take it as a compliment."

"Go take care of your business with Three Dog. You're dismissed."

Walking away, he thought "_Why me? I mean, seriously why?_"

Her last thought before he disappeared down the stairs was "_You're dismissed? He wasn't a member of the Brotherhood. I could've just killed him for something like that._"

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After such a conversation with a woman, it was generally a good idea to get as far away from her as possible. It was an even better idea than normal since this particular woman commanded all the troops and firepower in the building. He quickly went back to the armory and retrieved the gear he'd stripped off to wear his new suit. Walking out to the front steps of the building, he checked his salvage bundle briefly. "_Lots of guns. Almost too many. But now I can pick up a freakin' car._"

Securing his suit's helmet in place, he headed back to the building where the super mutants had tried to ambush the Pride. Some careful salvaging yielded more assault rifles and a significant amount of ammo, which he cradled all the way back to the front steps of Galaxy News Radio. Sorting his collection of weapons, he removed the gauntlets of his armor so he could begin some more precise work.

He could care less about maintaining the weapons he planned to sell, but he was well aware of the need to keep his own rifle functioning. His arms collection now included a dozen assault rifles, half standard R91 and half the strange Chinese version. Picking up three of the Chinese ones, he carefully stripped them down to their base parts. The weapons were foreign to him, but they were similar enough to American assault rifles that he was confident in his ability to reassemble them. Taking the best parts from each weapon, he was able to bring the third rifle to almost perfect condition and still keep the other two in working order, if not in somewhat worse condition than before.

With the massive amount of 5.56 ammunition he'd recovered, it felt pointless to use his other weapons. The submachine gun and sawed-off went into a bulging backpack, and out came several magazines and frag grenades. Attached to the magnetic grips on the waist of his new suit, he felt that they looked stupid, but he was in the market for functional, not fashionable. He closed the top of his pack and turned back to his salvage.

With the armor's super strength, it was easy to rip his armored vault suit into the strips he needed to tie up his improved arms collection. "_Note to self: get a thing of rope or tape or some bungie cords or something._" His new weapon bundle was huge and heavy, but it weighed almost nothing to the strength of a suit of power armor. Carefully swinging it on top of his backpack, he stepped back into the building. Three Dog was in here somewhere, but so was Sarah. He'd have to be careful if he expected to find one without running into the other.

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"What was that all about?"

Sentinel Lyons turned around to see Paladin Vargas standing at the door. "What are you talking about?"

"Permission to speak freely, Sentinel?"

She didn't like the tone in his voice, but if he had to ask for permission, then he had something important to say. "Fine. Speak freely."

"I can tell you right now that most of the members of the Brotherhood won't like you giving away power armor and training to a random civilian you just met."

"I know that already. He saved my life, what am I supposed to do, tell him to get lost? All you guys did was run for the nearest building."

"Against that kind of overwhelming force, our best option.... and yours.... was to head for the buildings and snipe from the windows. But the tactics of a previous battle is not one of the two things I wish to speak with you about. Since you seem quite steadfast on using our technology to reward this newcomer, the only thing I have left to talk about was the conversation you had with him."

"Yeah, I can't believe he would talk to me like that."

"Actually, I'm on the other side of the argument. All he did was make a joke."

Sarah wheeled on him. "What?"

"I don't think you should have treated him that way for such a simple comment."

Putting her face a few inches from his, she said "What he said was rude and barbaric, and don't think for a second that I'll forget it anytime soon."

"Rude and barbaric to you, perhaps, but you have to remember that he's a wastelander. That sort of talk flies outside the protected walls of the Citadel every day. Just think about how he's not a Brotherhood member before you order one of us to help you kill him."

Without another word, the paladin left his twice-stunned commander on the building's balcony, hoping that one day soon he would have an officer who was a little more versed in the outside world.

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Three Dog had been appraised of the battle and its strange details a few minutes after the super mutant behemoth had gained a new radioactive crater in its chest. Rumors always flowed toward the station, and the soldiers' description of the handy helper fit the rumor of the wasteland's so-called "Lone Wanderer." The one and only DJ in the capital wasteland had long suspected that the kid was somehow related to James, since they'd both supposedly come from a vault, but he was in for a surprise.

The guy coming up the stairs was wearing a set of power armor and matching helmet, but there were a few differences between this particular warrior and the rest of the brotherhood. The dead giveaway was the massive bundle on his back. "Hey, brother, what's up with the massive stash? You planning on going after another one of those behemoths?"

Michael removed the suit's helmet and put it under his arm. "I'm not with the Brotherhood. My name's Michael, and I came here to ask you a few questions."

"Oh, yeah, you're the classy cat everyone's been talking about! You did a lot of good in Megaton already; a couple more months and a guy like you'll turn the wasteland into Eden."

"You already know me?"

"By Michael, by Vault Warrior, and by Mr. 101. You've made a pretty good name for yourself, but you gotta watch out, there's already some bad guys after you. You know there's a contract out to the Talon Company to take you down?"

"Yeah, barely survived a few of them already. But how does everyone know I'm from Vault 101? I've been trying to keep the place secret."

"Because I've been telling them ever since I heard about you. The Lone Wanderer and Vault 101 make for good news kid."

Michael nearly took a swing at Three Dog. He'd already told too many people in Megaton, and now this asshole was broadcasting it all over the wasteland?

"You're going to tell everyone you were wrong. I don't come from a vault. Me and my father James are from some strange settlement over a hundred miles to the west, hidden in the mountains where bombs never fell. Call it "Appalachia" or something, say it's paradise untouched by the war, stuffed with all sorts of luxuries and pre-war tech, et cetera. That's send any morons looking for 101 away from here and into the desert."

"I can't just lie to the masses, kid. The truth is the truth."

"Let me finish. You can still tell the truth, because you don't know about this yet. James is a liar and a coward who got people killed because of his selfish actions. I'm out here to bring him back to face a trial. He's responsible for several deaths and dozens of injuries, and he needs to face justice. You will be broadcasting the truth; he lied to you, you're pissed about it, and he's a murderer."

"Geez. He never told me that. How'd he cause all that?"

"He knew no one was allowed to leave without the consent of the other people. He knew sneaking out with stolen codes would cause a panic. He knew an authoritative and psychotic overseer would react to the situation in the wrong way. The asshole king of 101 had executed several people who supposedly helped with the escape. I nearly died because of him, and several people actually did, including a boy James treated like a second son."

"Damn...." Three Dog turned his face away from the wanderer. "I can tell people about what your dad did, but I can't lie about your origins or the vault."

"You're going to do this for the sake of everyone in Vault 101. If you don't, and some raiders with a sack of explosives bash down the door and loot, rape, and kill everyone, I will personally extract my vengeance on both this station and the one responsible for its transmissions. Is that understood?"

Three Dog turned back around and looked at him with wide eyes. "You'd take this all away from the people of the wasteland? This is all they've got."

"And Vault 101 is all I got. It's a secret, and it stays a secret. This is not something I want to do, but if threats are the only way to assure my people's survival, I will do it. Now, where's James?"

Three Dog walked over to a chair and sat down. "I guess right is what you make it. Anyway, you need answers and I need help. I'll lie about the vault and I'll tell you about your dad, but I'm going to need something in return. You know my station's signal is all messed up, right?"

"Why does information cost so damn much out here?"

"Look, you gotta realize that this station is important. It's the only news the wasteland has; you ever listen to that Enclave radio?"

"Fine, I fix your station and you tell me where James is. Do you know what's wrong, or do I have to crawl all over this building with a wrench?"

The problem ended up being simple and difficult at the same time. The reason for the short range and bad quality was because Three Dog was currently using the station's transmitter to broadcast his signal. Originally he connected with a more powerful transmitter installed on top of the old Washington Monument, which then broadcast his signal over the whole wasteland. The Brotherhood of Steel guarded the monument and used it as an outpost in the immediate area, but a super mutant had apparently become obsessed with the shiny dish on top.

Hitting a small dish with an unscoped hunting rifle at a range of four hundred meters was a virtual impossibility. But this particular mutant, according to the Brotherhood's paladins stationed at the monument, had been shooting at the monument for over a month from a nearby building. Eventually he.... she.... it had managed to not only hit the dish, but knock it loose. A five hundred foot drop caused too much damage for a repair, and without a new dish the system simply wouldn't work.

"You want me to find an intact dish? In today's world? I don't suppose you have a location on a salvageable one?"

"I do, actually. The Museum of Technology has an intact one on a real-life replica of a lunar lander. Brotherhood scouted the place about a year back, but no one needed the dish then. Any mutants or raiders that moved in since then probably wouldn't have needed the dish, so it has to still be there. It has to weigh a lot, but you are wearing power armor."

After a moment of silence, he responded with "Fine. But you answer a few other questions first, as a down payment."

"No problem."

"How much do you know about how humans transform into ghouls?"

"Not too much really, but I can tell you about a ghoul city in...."

"Museum of History, called Underworld. What makes you think they'd have any information on the exact science?"

"Because one of their doctors has been studying it for years, trying to figure out a way to reverse the process. Name's Doctor Barrows, and I've heard good things about his research. If you do stop by Underworld, make sure you talk to him."

After a few more minutes, a few more questions, and a few directions, the wanderer was ready, at least in his head. Quickly removing his left gauntlet to program the relative information into his pip-boy, he accidentally noticed the audio message that James had left with Jonas, back on that first fateful day he left the vault. A thousand suppressed feelings broke through him, and it took every bit of strength to keep the expression on his face neutral. "_Maybe I should listen to it. Now._" He turned his attention back to the eccentric radio jockey in front of him.

"It's a little late to head out tonight. Do you mind if I crash here?"

"No problem with me, but I don't have any extra beds up here. The Brotherhood's got a barracks downstairs that's filled with bunks. After taking down that huge mutant bastard, I doubt they'll mind you sleeping next to them."

"_One of them might be a little pissed._" "Thanks."

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The Galaxy News Radio building was originally meant to send both audio and video news across not only the United States of America, but the globe as well. Scavenged and repurposed, the equipment within one of the studios made for a decent communication room linked to the Citadel. After any day's events, it was expected that the commanding officer in the building would inform his or her superiors of the proceeding war against the super mutants, but today the ranking officer had other things to tell her father.

"You're sure of this?"

"One hundred percent sure. He admitted it, but he really wanted it to be kept a secret."

The conversation with her father and commander, Elder Lyons, would normally have focused more on the super mutants' activities and less on any wastelanders encountered. But when a wastelander had access to a still-functional vault, it proved to be very important to a group dedicated to recovering and preserving technology lost during the Great War.

"Finally! The scribes have been trying to find vault locations in the Citadel's old computers for years. You must get both the location and access codes from him immediately. Just accessing the main server would provide us with more information than we would know what to do with."

"He won't give me that. Not lightly anyway. What should I do?"

The Elder paused for a moment. The primary mission of the Brotherhood of Steel was recovering and preserving technology, but the protection of the innocents of the wasteland was an unwritten rule, one that many held as more important. The so-called "Outcasts" of the Brotherhood had left because they were tired of Elder Lyons diverting scavenging patrols to protect the settlements of the wasteland from super mutants. There was no way he could order her to hold this man against his will.

"Follow him."

"What?"

"You said he saved your life. Offer your assistance in his mission. If he finds his father and returns to his vault, you'll have the location."

"You think he'll fall for that?"

"If not, tell him you want to make a trade. You help him on his quest, and in exchange, he lets you talk to his vault's leader at the end of his journey. Try to negotiate a trade agreement or at least a copy of their pre-war archives. But regardless of which way you use to get the vault's location, you must keep this mission secret, even from your own team. For both our sake and the safety of the people in the vault."

After another pause, Sarah jumped back into the details of the day's battles and tried to avoid thinking about her new assignment. Escorting a wastelander around, helping him try to find one man in the entire capitol area. One untrained, possibly unarmed man straight out of a vault. By her guess, the wanderer's father was most likely eaten or enslaved by now. But had she seen Michael a few weeks ago, she knew she would have said the same thing. Perhaps luck ran in the family.

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The conversation with Three Dog had gone well, but the talk about his father James had been more that enough to throw the wanderer off balance. In another hour he would be back to viewing his father with the same contempt as the last few weeks, but for now, he felt conflicted enough to actually want to hear the message. After retreating to a deserted portion of the station, he removed his gauntlet once more and selected the file containing the note.

"_Hold on Jonas, I need to record this first. I...... I don't really know how to tell you this. I hope you'll understand, but I know you might be angry. I thought about it for a long time, but in the end I decided it was best for you not to know. So many things could have gone wrong, and there's really no telling how the overseer will react when he finds out. It's best if he can blame everything on me. Obviously you already know that I'm gone. It was something I needed to do. You're an adult now. You're ready to be on your own. Maybe someday things will change and we can see each other again. I can't tell you why I left or where I'm going. I don't want you to follow me. God knows life in the vault isn't perfect, but at least you'll be safe. Just knowing that will be enough to keep me going." _

_"Don't mean to rush you, Doc, but I'd feel better if we got this over with."_

_"Okay. Go ahead. Goodbye. I love you."_

With a soft beep, the message cut off and left a stunned nineteen year old alone in its wake. Half of his body still screaming for vengeance, the other half broke down and demanded a few tears be issued after that kind of message. He settled for shoving his still armored right hand through the nearest wall and letting loose with a roar of anger. It wasn't enough for him, and a few salty drops began falling as he stared at the floor, arm still sunk up to the elbow in the newly formed hole in the wall. The soft whine of a well-maintained motor finally caught his attention, and he brought his face back up.

He stared down the hall to find Sarah Lyons less than ten feet away from him.

-------------------------------------------------------------

"How long have you been standing there?"

It took her a moment to respond. She seemed conflicted, unsure, which stood in stark contrast to the proud warrior look she had displayed since they'd met earlier that day. "Long enough to hear that message."

He pulled his arm out of the wall and walked toward her. "So, why'd you track me down? You're not here by accident."

"I just wanted to apologize for how I reacted earlier."

Michael cracked a small smile. "You want something, and it isn't forgiveness. Just be blunt about it."

"_So much for the trick version._" "I want to make you a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"I help you find your dad, and in exchange, you let me talk to your vault's leader at the end of your journey."

"What? Why?"

She cocked her head slightly to the side, as if angered by this continued conversation. "The Brotherhood is all about recovering lost technology. A little trade or at least a copy of your vault's pre-war records would be unbelievably helpful to our cause."

"Your Citadel is the remains of the pre-war Pentagon, right?"

"Yes, that's what the government called it."

"I hated history classes back in the vault, but I do remember the details of that particular building. The computers in that facility should have top secret information on everything in the old United States, including the location of vaults. Why do you need me?"

With a smile spreading across her usually stoic face, she let out "Not everything in a two-hundred year old building still works. Vaults are high on our list of priorities for scavenging technology, but even a dozen scribes working over blown hard drives and corrupted holotape backups isn't enough to produce a single location."

He turned away from her for a moment. "_Escorted by a member of the Brotherhood. Much easier to find James? Definitely._"

Still facing away from her, he said "One condition. As few people in the Brotherhood know about the vault's location as possible. With that in mind, you've got a deal. When we drag my dad back to the vault, I'll take you straight to the overseer. Can't promise anything, but you'll get your conversation."

"Good. It's pretty late, let's head back to the barracks. We're both going to need some sleep for tomorrow. Where're we headed?"

Pulling his gear to his shoulders, he said "The mall district. I need to fix Three Dog's transmitter before he'll tell me where he sent my dad."

An inquisitive look spread across her face. "He's been trying to get us to do that for months now. Why did you agree to do it? You don't have any organization's rules or commanding officer, you could just force the information out of him."

"I already threatened that eccentric moron. He nearly refused to shut up about Vault 101 and me. He promised that now he'd going to concentrate on broadcasting how my dad's a wanted fugitive from some mysterious paradise west of here, and he's been lying about the vault to cover up his past."

"Wow. He's always going on and on about the truth, and you're getting him to lie to everyone?"

"It's the truth, except for the part about our mysterious paradise not really being a vault. Like I said before, I'm trying to keep the people in there safe."

---------------------------------------------------------------

With the next hour spent discussing the various details of the wasteland, themselves, and anything else that seemed important, they finally made it to the barracks and caught a few hours of sleep. Waking to the same screeching alarm clock as every other soldier in the room, they walked into the makeshift mess hall and ate a breakfast of hydroponic-grown fruits and oatmeal in front of a confused group of soldiers. Michael picked up a spoonful of mush and waved it in front of her, doing his best to ignore the staring warriors. "You guys do get the best food in the wasteland."

"We get some of it from Rivet City, but we did build extensive facilities in the citadel. We needed to import a lot of seeds from them, but now we make most of our own food. Radiation free, vitamin rich, and wonderfully tasty. After our little adventure is over, you'll be begging me to get you into the Citadel just for the food."

The men and women listening in on the conversation became visibly agitated when they heard their commander say 'our little adventure.' A helmeted paladin quickly came up to the table. "Sentinel, when are we going on patrol today?"

She flashed him the perfect version of an officer's annoyed expression. "It's fifteen minutes until morning briefing. You'll get all the answers you need then. Now, Michael, let's hit the armory."

After a moment of navigating the hallways, they arrived back at the station's armory, in that same fateful room that had nearly made them enemies the day earlier. Michael walked up to the bare spot on the wall where his armor had been and said "Hey, what used to be here?"

She looked at him with a puzzled expression. "That's where the suit of power armor was that you're wearing. Don't you remember?"

He gave her a grin and did his best to not laugh at her. "I'm trying to teach you sarcasm. You're supposed to laugh at me and call me a smartass."

"Oh. Save it for later, get over here and pick out a laser rifle."

"Hold on. I think I'll take some of those drum magazines off you." Before she could say anything, he'd picked one of the 75 round drums the Brotherhood rarely used and started to load it with rounds from his backpack.

She picked up another of the laser rifles and shoved it in his face. "AER9 Laser Rifle. Burns through a half inch of steel with one uncharged shot. One blast per second, offers perfect accuracy and instantaneous hit every time you pull the trigger. Aimed fire can take down a super mutant in a single blow. Easily worth a thousand caps in this condition, and I'm freakin' giving it to you."

He took the energy weapon and set it down on the counter. Pulling his assault rifle off his pack, he countered her tiny speech with "Chinese Assault Rifle. Designed and manufactured during the Resource Wars by the Chinese Empire for the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese infiltration units in America, it's very similar but substantially better than the standard R91 used by American troops. Five rounds per second, a trained soldier can empty every bullet in a magazine, at full auto, on the inside of a target one meter in diameter at a distance of fifty meters. It includes all the little amenities it needs to keep the 5.56mm round it uses at a high velocity, which in turn allows the bullets to significantly tumble and fragment after entering soft tissue, causing increased damage and maximizing the difficulty of surgically extracting the round. It penetrates super mutant flesh and bone well enough for several aimed rounds to take one down, or twenty-four rounds sprayed in the right places." He waited a moment for his speech to sink in, then continued. "Don't get me wrong, I'm taking your laser rifle. But until I find a better close-quarters weapon, I'll need this."

She paused for a moment. "Weapons-obsessed and borderline psychotic. Can't believe I ever thought about trying to kill you."

After a few minutes, the duo was ready. Sarah had a laser rifle, laser pistol, the entire building's minimal stock of plasma grenades, and enough microfusion and energy cells for a war. Michael had "borrowed" a similar laser rifle and a few microfusion cells for it, but still held onto the Chinese assault rifle he had perfected the night before. He'd also exchanged most of his traditional magazines for a half-dozen drum magazines that held over three times as many rounds. Finishing up his collection was the small number of fragmentation grenades that he'd scavenged the day before, and a single mini-nuke from the Brotherhood's stockpile. Despite her protests that it was useless without one of the launchers to go with it, he said "You never know when having a nuclear weapon could come in handy."

His supplies of stimpacks and med-x had been nearly depeleted, and he had almost no anti-radiation medicine before he left the vault. His water bottles were nearly empty, and the small amount of food he'd brought along was half gone. Fortunately, the armory wasn't only storing weapons, and every empty bottle in his overstuffed backpack was now full of pure H20, along with a few new bottles alongside them. Sarah's new pack was soon filled by enough medicine for an army, not to mention plenty of extra water for her and enough packaged radiation-free food to last the both of them for a week.

She tried to convince him to leave behind his large salvage bundle, but the combination of power armor and the argument that they'd need to get some caps without selling Brotherhood equipment overrode her concerns about mobility. "Fine. I was gonna take point anyway."

------------------------------------------------------

Most of the building's fighters were already assembled in the main hall when Michael and Sarah arrived. The murmurs were cut short by a quick speech from their commanding officer.

"Except for Lyons Pride, there will be no changes in your assignments. Whatever your assignment, be it clearing the area or guarding our outpost here, do it to the best of your abilities. Watch your back out there. You're all dismissed."

With all but two other members of the Brotherhood leaving the room, she walked toward the members of her group in the room. Paladin Vargas stepped forward. "What are your orders Sentinel?"

"You and Knight Captain Colvin are to report back to the Citadel and regroup with the rest of the Pride. You will inform Elder Lyons of the death of Reddin and tell him that I am taking an extended leave. It's not going to be all rest; be sure to tell him that I'm becoming familiar with the wasteland and training in non-Brotherhood tactics. He will temporarily assign one of the Pride as commanding officer until my return."

There was several seconds of silence before the other soldier responded. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"You're leaving to escort around a wastelander that you just met yesterday?"

"Partner, not escort. You underestimate the value of a little experience outside the Brotherhood. As well, I'm tired of taking all my leave inside the Citadel. You have your orders, now follow them."

With a reluctant salute, the two members drew their weapons and walked out of the building.

"Thanks for not telling them. Your excuse went pretty well if you ask me. You think they'll make it back to the Citadel without you?"

With a sorrowful expression forming on her face, she turned away from him. "They're the best of the best. I'm sure that they'll be fine without me."

"Whoa, hold the unhappiness for a moment. You'll be seeing them again soon, and you'll probably get a good trophy to show them at the end of our little sojourn. I bet we'll kill something before the end of the day, you think that'll cheer you up?"

With a smile starting to creep out of her as she put her helmet on, she said "Do you know a good way to the mall, or do you want me to lead you to our outpost there?"

"If you've got firsthand experience, how can I question your route?"

"Back of this building leads to Dupont Circle. We take the Dupont Circle Station to Metro Central; from there we can go just about anywhere in downtown DC."

"Lead on Sentinel."

"That's going to get old quickly. I'm Sarah and you're Michael, okay?"

He put his helmet on with a smile. "As you command."

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There were a number of feral ghouls scattered in the first part of Dupont Circle. Normally they hated the sun, but these ones seemed to be fine with it. Sarah nudged him and raised her laser rifle. "You first. Got to teach you the differences between lead and lasers."

He pulled his new laser rifle from its spot on his back and leveled it at a distant ghoul. "Actually, I'm pretty sure my bullets are tungsten. Penetration is a priority against green giants with natural body armor. But regardless of my ammunition's composition, I doubt there's that much to learn about these things."

With the strange electric sound that was standard for laser weaponry, a beam shot out across the square and missed the closest ghoul by nearly a half meter. The semi-intelligent creature stopped its shambling and turned toward the source of the blast, only to have a new hole in its chest before it could make a sound.

"Are you kidding me? Did you actually lead that target? With a laser weapon?"

He let out a sheepish grin that was invisible under his helmet. "Old habits die hard." Turning their attention away from each other and back to the remaining creatures, the two quickly dispatched them all, with the majority of kills being Sarah's. Walking down the street as if nothing was wrong in the wasteland, they were surprised by a ghoul that had been hiding behind an old bus. Pulling his left hand from his rifle, Michael stepped forward to meet the charging creature with an armored fist. Its skull shattered under the impact, and a half-second later it fell to the ground.

"Why didn't you just shoot it?"

He turned back around. "Sarah, you've been in power armor forever. The ability to punch a hole in a concrete wall is a little new to me, and I'm really enjoying it."

Continuing forward, they later encountered a large group of raiders concentrated not far from the metro station they were trying to access. Sniping with an instantaneous and super-accurate laser rifle may be very effective, but the beam makes it fairly easy to find whoever is shooting, and one of the two sharpshooters was rather unfamiliar with the new weapon he was wielding. The large number of raiders were soon charging toward the armored pair.

Most of the savages' weapons fire hit the concrete barrier the were crouching behind, and what few bullets hit their mark simply bounced off the power armor. With another grin that no one could see, he pulled the pin from one of his fragmentation grenades and let it fly. Before Sarah could reload her laser rifle, an explosion had killed four of the charging raiders and scattered the rest. By the time she brought her weapon to bear, the survivors were being mowed down by her partner's Chinese assault rifle.

Contributing a few final shots to the battle, she turned toward Michael after the last raider fell. "Those antique bullets are still pretty effective."

"Technology isn't everything. That's my first wasteland lesson to you. The second is that you loot everyone you kill."

It turned out to be a decent haul. The few firearms and accompanying ammunition were mostly .32 and 10mm, but it would all still sell at the next store they found. None of them had very many caps, but altogether the large group had just over two hundred for their coffers. A few drugs, including intact canisters of jet, were also among the dead. Seeing the cartridges full of pink liquid sent a shiver through Michael, and somehow the items were in his bag two seconds later. The few shreds of willpower in his body allow him to pull them all back out and set them on the ground.

"Sarah, do you see these?"

She came over to him. "Yeah, they show us all the wasteland's drugs in training. Jet, right?"

"If we're gonna sell these back to some dealer, you're going to have to hold onto them until we get there."

"Why?"

"Because I was a moron junkie on this stuff for a little while after I left home. It's best for temptation to be eliminated."

"Is that what the pill you took at breakfast was all about?"

"That was a withdrawal dampener. Helps keep me from feeling the shakes."

Without saying anything, she brought her armored foot down on the canisters. "These aren't worth it then, especially considering the other stuff we've got."

"I fucking love you."

Most people would have understood the meaning in that situation, but Sarah still didn't know what sarcasm was, and the helmets on their heads prevented her from seeing the expression on his face.

"What?"

"Sorry. That expression works a lot better when you can see me."

"Uh.... 'I fucking love you'? Isn't that a little much for an expression?"

"I was expressing extreme gratitude at the thought that you might have saved me from a relapse into a life of drug addiction. I don't think I could've done that, destroying them I mean. You seriously did me a giant favor."

She pulled her helmet off. "You are still really confusing me. Take your helmet off."

As soon as he did so, she walked up and put her face less than a foot from his. "Say it again."

Doing his best to keep a scoundrel's smile, he said "I fucking love you."

Reciprocating with her best copy of his smile, she turned around. "Just had to hear it without the voice filters."

Two extremely confused companions picked up their gear and headed down the stairs leading to Dupont Circle Station, both wondering exactly how to get through this situation in the way they wanted to.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The number of ghouls in this section of subway turned out to be zero. This ruined station had apparently been recently converted into a raider base. Maneuvering through the tunnels was incredibly easy, as most of the raiders had been wiped out on the surface already. They'd chosen a horrible location for a headquarters, being that the Brotherhood used the route at least once a month.

A week ago the route from Galaxy News Radio to the mall had been relatively clean, and now it was clean again, thanks to Michael and Sarah removing the human filth that had tried to infest the metro. After dispatching a few feral ghouls who had wandered into the wrong tunnels, they arrived at the station exit in front of the Museum of Natural History in the Mall District, as it was now called.

"Before we go up, I gotta say it again: watch your back. The Brotherhood doesn't control this entire area, and parts of it are really dangerous."

"I know. What I don't know is how prejudiced you are against sentient ghouls."

She stopped for a moment. "I don't think they're monsters. But you can't blame me for being a little suspicious of something that's rotting and still moving at the same time."

"No, I won't blame your suspicions. I will blame you if you show them in an obvious manner. I have to stop by the ghoul settlement here, and I'd like you to come along. I'm hoping that this entire endeavor opens the eyes of the Brotherhood's future leader."

"Trust me, you've already opened my eyes. But I like the whole future leader thing. I think my dad's more likely to pick someone older and more experienced to replace him. You really think he'll be very eager to choose me?"

"I can't know that. The only person who really does is you and maybe your mother."

With the power armor helmets, again the two were blocked from seeing each other's true emotions. A second of silence permeated the subway platform before Sarah said "My mother died a long time ago."

"Sorry."

"Just don't talk about it. Now show me some ghouls already, and I'll show you the tallest building in the wasteland."

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Sarah wasn't kidding about the tall part. The Washington Monument could be seen for miles in any direction from DC, and it was most definitely the tallest building left standing. Before she could lead him to the structure, he pulled her back and toward the Museum of Natural History.

"You can show me it later when we've got the stuff to fix the transmitter at the top. For now, I have to chat with a few ghouls." Leading her toward the building that displayed a sign saying "Museum of History", a moment's walk placed them right around the corner from the front entrance. They froze for a moment as a distant ghoul outside the door raised a familiar model of laser weaponry in their direction.

"Get out of here! This thing can penetrate your armor and you know it!"

Leaving a hand in front of Sarah to stop her, he used his other limb to remove his helmet. "Easy now. I've got nothing against ghouls. I'm not even Brotherhood. A town as big as yours is a great place to trade and ask a few questions."

Sarah pulled her helmet off. "Just let us in already, we're not gonna kill anyone."

The ghoul lowered her rifle and pulled out a small radio. "Two human assholes want inside. They got salvage to trade. Maybe you shouldn't kill him." She turned back toward the approaching figures. "I'm Willow. That little call might be enough to get you in alive. No promises."

Walking over slowly, the wanderer extended his hand and said "A pleasure to meet you Willow. I'm Michael, and this is Sarah."

A handshake when you've got the strength to turn a brick to powder is a difficult maneuver at best. Willow took his hand and did her best to give the suited man a firm grip as he shook her hand. Sarah was too busy staring at the pristine laser rifle that Willow was holding to notice how well her student was controlling his power armor. "How the hell did you get your hands on a weapon like that?"

The female ghoul let out a strange laugh that seemed similar to the one Gob had. "The Brotherhood fights the super mutants out here all the time. Since the super mutants pretty much ignore us ghouls, we wait until the mutants win, then go out and salvage any extra stuff. They take the regular firearms, but usually ignore the energy weapons and pieces of power armor for some reason, and we're pretty good at piecing it all back together. Sometimes the caravans even risk coming all the way into the ruins because we've got so much extra stuff. Tulip will give you some good deals, if only because she never gets anyone to trade with."

Sarah only seemed to hear one part of the ghoulish girl's statement. "You loot dead Brotherhood members? That's barbaric!"

The sentry wasn't taken aback at all, something that surprised both Sarah and Michael. "Great, our town really needs a high and mighty preacher. Don't know how you haven't figured it out yet, but people die. What the hell are we supposed to do, bury them with all their stuff? The super mutants don't usually leave the bodies anyway. They eat all the intact parts."

Michael turned back toward his partner. "Easy Sarah. The Brotherhood usually attacks ghouls on sight, why exactly would they care about a dignified burial? And if I die I wouldn't be offended if someone else used my stuff. Not like I can take it to hell with me."

Willow let out another laugh before Sarah could speak. "You've already given up on heaven? That makes you a realist."

A quick glance told them both that Sarah wasn't having a good time, and a farewell was exchanged between ghoul and wanderer. Walking through the double doors slowly, Sarah waited until they were out of earshot of Willow. "Never thought you were so pessimistic."

"Sarah, if you don't get some joking around ingrained into your brain, you are really gonna start bringing me down."

"Where's that line you're always talking about? How am I supposed to know which side of it stuff's on?"

"Okay. I'll be a little more optimistic and you'll try to watch and learn on sarcasm, okay? Now how about giving me a little laugh to make me feel better about this conversation?"

With a short laugh that seemed sincere enough, the helmetless duo walked into what one could honestly call a city of the dead.

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The response from every nearby ghoul inside the second set of doors was as expected. Every one of them immediately trained their weapons on the two figures. As for the newcomers, one responded with a raised rifle and the other responded with barely raised hands and the short statement "Alright, you win. Now let's play talking instead of killing."

Only one of them lowered their weapons. The newly disarmed, blue-suited ghoul said "Willow didn't say nothing about you being Steel Knights."

"I'm a free agent who happens to know what to do when it comes to power armor. She's Brotherhood, but she's on leave. Give us a break."

"Then get the bitch to lower her gun."

Michael's VATS came online faster than Sarah could pull the trigger. A second later, everyone present was amazed to find the ghoul named Winthrop on the floor, powered armor pinning him with several hundred pounds of force. The wanderer lowered the weapon in his other hand and concentrated on the living corpse under his other hand.

"Take it back."

"What?"

"I said take it back. You know this suit can crush your ribcage in half a second."

Sarah was amazed to see Michael standing up for her, but she was more amazed to see him move so quickly again. Until his secret was exposed, he was SupermanTM to all those present. The other ghouls lowered their weapons at the unusual sight.

"Okay! Okay! She's not a bitch!"

With laughs coming from most of those present, Michael pulled the man to his feet. "Sorry about that, but you know I totally should've gone 'Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like' on your ass."

"How the hell'd you do that?"

"Magic. Are you guys gonna let us in or what?"

The ghouls looked around at each other before one said "As long as you don't crush anyone, human caps are as good as ghoul caps."

"Man, I love the non-discrimination of capitalism." Michael turned back toward Sarah. "Sorry to be overprotective, but that seemed like something that might set you off."

"Well, great to see you're hovering over me. I was thinking about shooting him for that, so I guess everyone should thank you for stopping a small war."

The pair walked past the assembled ghouls and deeper into the town of Underworld. One of them felt inclined to mutter under his breath "What a fucked up pair."

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Well, what do you know. Our sheriff's sent on a stupid errand while a crazy bitch ends up being his new best friend. Life is full of surprises. Is Three Dog going to work with Michael's requests, or is he so committed to the truth he's still going to keep blabbing about Vault 101? Is Sarah ready to face a different lifestyle in the wastes, or is she going to keep her prejudices? And after that kind of first impression, is he really going to get anything from the ghouls of the Underworld besides harsh language? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!

P.S. - Again, thanks goes out to Private 1st class Martin R. for sending me so many different weaponry articles, most notably the one on the 5.56 rounds used in the military. If there's ever a giant nuclear war that gives super mutants a chance to take over, I hope you let me hide in your house :)

P.P.S. - All references to Superman and his super-speed are the property of DC Comics and its owner Warner Brothers Entertainment and its owner Time Warner. These in no way constitute the support or approval of this work by these companies; in fact, they might sue me for using them. Kinda sucks. But Bethesda and ZeniMax haven't sued over me using Fallout 3, so maybe I'll be okay.


	14. The Good, The Bad, and The Very Ugly

Less by choice and more by necessity, the wanderer has partnered with a leader of the Brotherhood of Steel named Sarah Lyons. Facing the raiders, slavers, and super mutants of the wasteland will be much easier, but can he trust her with his secrets? And even if the future is certain, the present is not, as he has led her, knowing full well of the Brotherhood's racist tendencies, into a city of ghouls. Can he find his father and preserve the lives of those within Vault 101, or will his newest challenges prove too much for even him?

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Chapter 14 – The Good, The Bad, and The Very Ugly

The main hall of Underworld was small, at least to be the main street for an entire town. But it was originally just part of a museum, so it couldn't be blamed on the architect. With few doors to choose from and every ghoul in the hall watching intently, Michael settled on an entrance marked with the sign "Underworld Outfitters" and led his partner through.

A veritable treasure trove of junk was piled around the room, reminding him briefly of Moira back in Megaton. Weapons were scattered within the mess randomly, making it look as though the store's owner valued bent tin cans as much as hunting rifles. Behind a counter at the other side of the room sat a delicate looking ghoul, excited yet cautious in the face of these two new power armored strangers.

"Welcome to Underworld Outfitters! I'm Tulip, and I assume you're hear to trade?"

Michael flashed her back a smile and unslung his massive bundle of weapons. "You got that right. But I'm not just here for caps; do you work on the weapons you sell?"

"Of course! But Winthrop is better when it comes to repairing things. I usually enlist him for tough jobs."

With a careful tug, the laser rifle on his back came loose and he set it on the counter in front of him. "I need a scope on this baby. It's a sniper's weapon, but the iron sights just don't do it."

"Oh, I can make one real easy. I got lots of old optics around here, I'm sure I can fashion something out of half a binocular. Or maybe I can turn a whole one into two sets? You looking for a scope on yours Miss?"

"No." Michael turned around to find Sarah Lyons in an even worse mood than before he'd led her through the doors to Underworld, her rifle in her hands and ready to fire. The expression on her face wasn't something you could consider happy or even neutral. It was anger. Though her weapon wasn't pointed at Tulip, it definitely looked as though she did not want to hand her rifle to a ghoul.

"Do you actually want a scopeless weapon Sarah?"

"I'm the only one who works on my weapons, no one else."

Nodding slightly, he turned back to Tulip and quietly continued. "So how far out can you make this weapon accurate?"

The ghoulish woman moved her eyes away from Sarah and back to the human that actually wanted to talk to her. "Hmm... probably about three hundred yards, maybe more if I get Winthrop's help. Been considering a job like this for a while actually, but none of the others are worried since we've got several old sniper rifles."

The mention of sniper rifles jerked him out of his professional business stance. "Sniper rifles? What are they chambered for? Can I see them? Are you selling any of them?"

Reflexively jerking back in the face of a hailstorm of questions, she reached under the counter and produced two aged rifles, both obvious knockoffs of the famous DKS-501 used throughout the United States Army before the war. They looked well maintained, but the patchwork appearance was more than enough to remind him of the laser rifle sitting next to them.

"Uh... sorry for that outburst. Always loved guns, and always thought a sniper rifle would be nice to have. Only thing I love more than a good gun is a bag of explosives."

Tulip's eyes lit up in nearly the same fashion as Michael's had only a few moments ago. "Explosives eh? I just fixed something a few weeks ago that you might find interesting." He watched as she again reached under the counter, producing something that he only believed he would see in pictures. The smooth black barrel, the strange trigger assembly, the detachable stock for standalone use.... it was all more than familiar to him. It was a M320 grenade launcher.

"These old launchers were great, but they're a lot more delicate than the rifles they were slung under, and two hundred years has made most of them next to useless. Manufacturing new parts is hard, but we've dragged lots of machinery into this building in the last two centuries, and I finally found the right spare parts to grind a while back. Now it works like a charm, and I've finally got a use for that old stash of 40mm grenades."

Pulling himself from the urge to snatch the launcher from her hands, he stepped back to his bundle and produced three of his American assault rifles. "These rifles for your launcher, plus enough grenades for a party." She let out a short laugh, and countered with "No way. This is worth more. Sweeten the deal." With his best attempt at a smile, he pulled the small stockpile of .32 ammunition from his bag and his two old hunting rifles out of his satchel, dropping them on the counter with the statement "I want ten grenades." At first she seemed ready to ask for more, but after a moment she raised her hands and said with a smile "You're robbing me, you know that? I'll give you eight grenades, no more."

Putting on his best scoundrel's grin, he snatched the launcher from the counter with one hand and his favored Chinese assault rifle with the other. Though originally meant for other assault rifle types, the Chinese had put adequate attachment rails on their weapons. They were similar enough, and with a little over-the-shoulder advice from Sarah, who had become quite interested when she overheard Tulip mention the launcher, he managed to attach the weapon under the barrel of his assault rifle. By the time he turned back to the counter Tulip had placed eight small canisters on the counter and begun to stash her newest acquisitions in different locations around the store.

With her back turned as she rummaged for a good spot to put some of her newest gear, the store owner went on. "The markings have faded completely, so maybe fifty years ago I put a quick paint stripe on each one. The red half are high explosive, the green half are anti-personnel combos of shot and small sabots. Either kind will definitely take down super mutants, maybe even penetrate power armor, but I've never had a chance to try it on a suit." Nodding even though the turned ghoul couldn't see, he loaded one of the high explosive rounds into the launcher and slung his newly modified rifle onto his back, then tried to put the remaining grenades into his pack. There was no space left, he simply had too much gear crammed inside his faithful Vault-Tec travel pack. It was time to make some room.

Looking at the newly cleared counter, he pulled out everything from his backpack and bundle that he thought he wouldn't need anymore. Submachine gun, sawed-off shotgun, the combat shotgun missing a drum, his eight remaining assault rifles, and all but one of his combat knives were set before him. His small stockpile of 10mm ammunition and shotgun shells went at the edge of the pile. It only left him with his Chinese assault rifle, laser rifle, and combat knife, but he had over a thousand rounds of 5.56mm ammunition and ten full reloads of microfusion cells for his laser rifle. With the addition of the launcher and grenades, his fragmentation grenades seemed useless, but he still left them on his belt and in his bag. The only thing missing was a good sidearm....

The smile on the wanderer's face matched the look of surprise on Tulip's as she surveyed the arsenal brought to her by the wanderer. Before she could speak, he said "Along with the mountain of caps for this stuff, I need one more weapon. Something powerful, the perfect sidearm to complement my newly modded rifle. Do you have anything that fits that description?"

Turning to the side, the store owner waved him toward a nearby footlocker before saying "I keep everything you could call a pistol in there. There are a few weapons you might like inside." Withdrawing as she began to poke at Michael's offerings, he rummaged through the small container. There were a few each of 10mm and .32 pistols, as well as another of those strange Chinese pistols. A pair of scoped revolvers, chambered for .44 magnum rounds, caught his eyes, but they were eclipsed by the last weapon in the container. A Desert Eagle Mark XIX, chambered not for the .44 magnum but instead for .50 Action Express, sat at the bottom of the box. As he stood up with the weapon in his hands the old footlocker's lid fell closed, as if fate was telling him to take the weapon. He turned back toward the counter to find that Tulip had already pulled out a box of appropriate ammunition and several empty magazines for the weapon.

"I knew you'd go for that one. Been waiting for someone to buy that one for a long time, but no one seemed to want it. Don't know why, a round from that baby'll penetrate anything. Accuracy could be a problem, but you look like you know what you're doing. You want it?"

The wanderer turned the weapon over several times, examining it closely. It would have horrible recoil under the best circumstances, but it could put a hole in just about anything, and with super mutants running around DC, it was exactly what he needed. "Yes. Now trading this and the ammunition for it, while I offer up everything on the counter, how many caps are you going to give me to make the deal even?"

She stared away at the counter for a moment before responding. "One thousand."

"I want twice that."

Both ghoul and wanderer stared at each other, analyzing each other's expressions. After a moment's silence, Sarah finally chose to include herself in the conversation.

"Let's not be greedy Michael." She glanced back toward Tulip. "But let's not get cheated either. How about fifteen hundred?"

The store owner smiled, happy to see that perhaps this human had a small chance of dealing politely with ghouls. "Fourteen. You still haven't offered anything to pay for that upgrade on your laser rifle, and I think a hundred caps is fair."

Michael turned his gaze back from now not so silent Sarah and toward Tulip. "One thousand four hundred caps it is." The ghoul nodded and handed him the magazines for his new Desert Eagle. With a giddy expression he loaded the miniature cannon and drew the slide, feeling a momentary burst of adrenaline as he heard the round slide into the chamber. He turned the weapon over again and again, all the while the same phrase resonating throughout his mind. The weapon was different and there was no enemy before him, but his mind still sung it silently.

"_Do you feel lucky, punk?_"

Lost in the moment, it took a shove from Sarah to bring him back to reality. He nodded in thanks before stowing his new toy and turning back to Tulip, who had just finished her counting. Wordlessly she presented him a heavy bag, which he took from her with an equal amount of silence. Sarah once again chose to break the hush surrounding them. "Since you didn't feel like watching her count, I did. It's exactly fourteen hundred. Nothing to worry about."

"A vote of confidence from you is nice, considering how you acted when you first came into my store."

Before Sarah could respond, Michael slapped a hand down on her shoulder and turned toward Tulip. "She's a little rough around the edges, but I think bringing her into town with me today will prove to be an enlightening experience. Mind if I ask you two questions before we go?"

An expression of curiosity crossed the ghoul's face. "Exactly two?"

"Where's Doctor Barrows, and where can I get a hard drink?"

"Barrows is always at the Chop Shop all day, and most of the night too. That's what our infirmary is called, the Chop Shop. He's a great doctor, don't pay attention to the place's name, it's just a joke. How do you know his name anyway?"

"I was referred to him for questions on the ghoul condition. Is he the right man?"

Tulip leaned over the counter and lowered her voice slightly. "He's researching it, but keep it quiet while you're here. Few of us know, and most of those that don't wouldn't like to hear it. Nearly everyone in this town has accepted the change, and most don't like the idea of him experimenting on his own kind, even if they're ferals." She pulled back from her hushed stance. "As for the drink, you've got two choices. Carol's place will mostly have weak stuff, but it's a diner/hotel, so that's what you get. The Ninth Circle will have everything you could possibly want, but be careful in there. It's a lot rougher and less friendly."

After a few semi-clear directions to the two bars and single infirmary, the wanderer bid farewell to the ghoulish woman, happy to see a half-hearted goodbye being issued from Sarah's lips as she followed him out of the door. With time to burn until his new upgrade was completed, he headed for the Chop Shop, hoping to find some answers to the questions that had been plaguing him.

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"Why do you need to know about ghouls?"

He turned away from her, but not before she saw his expression visibly tighten, as if he was hoping that she wouldn't ask. Sarah was starting to feel a little more relaxed after seeing how civil and patient Tulip had been with them even though they were humans. But one of the last questions Michael had asked the store owner had been unusual enough for her to need an answer, regardless of his feelings. She put a hand on his shoulder and spun him back around.

"I said, WHY DO YOU..."

He cut her off quickly, but with a quiet voice that was unlike him. "I think I might be turning into one."

His expression now angry, he continued toward the Chop Shop, forcing a stunned Sentinel to double time it to close the new distance between them. She'd thought that this adventure could be a bad mistake from the beginning, but now she knew she might be escorting a wastelander that was mutating into a ghoul. Every instinct she had told her to smack him over the back of the head and drag him back to the Citadel. To actually be able to study a ghoul as they transformed.....

But she knew what would happen at the end of that study. The scribes would wait until they'd extracted every last bit of data, but eventually one of them would call in a paladin to kill the monster and dump it over the walls. He'd be lucky if they spared him a dose of med-x during their experiments, even luckier if they overdosed him instead of shooting him. They'd never spare his life, regardless of what data he might be holding on a vault. Shit! If they found out about that, torturing him for the location wouldn't be a problem anymore. Humans got protection, but a human who was mutating would get no mercy. She didn't like it, but letting him walk was her only choice.

Or was it? Everything she told herself suddenly didn't make sense. She was choosing to keep Michael safe from the Brotherhood, even knowing what good his death might do for them. "_Why?_" she thought to herself. "_Why can't I turn him in?_"

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Ignorant to the moral conflict raging within his partner, Michael pushed aside the old doors to the Chop Shop and in a heartbeat drew his rifle from his back. Twenty feet away, separated from him by only a single pane of glass, were two ghouls unlike any he'd seen before. Their skin was still mottled and rotten like others, but it glowed.... glowed with a fluorescent green that could only be described as hellish. He avoided the urge to pull the trigger and looked around the room. Two ghouls wearing the clothing of a doctor and nurse stood off to the side, originally hovering over a terminal but now staring at their human guest.

"The glass is reinforced, don't worry. They'll never break through." The speaking figure, a male ghoul with blood staining his shirt, stood and approached the wanderer. "Besides, I need them. They're mobile radiation sources; I can toss a critically wounded patient in with them and have them healed in no time. A wounded ghoul anyway, ferals don't kill their own kind, only a pure human like you."

Doing his best to avoid staring at the creatures, he watched as Sarah came through the door and reacted exactly as he did before. After waiting a second to make sure Sarah didn't open fire, he turned back to the ghoul speaking to him. "What are those things?"

"Everyone calls them Glowing Ones. They're so heavily irradiated that some of their tissues have significant buildups of phosphorescent isotopes like radium, making them glow even in total darkness. Stand next to them and you're guaranteed to get a few rads every second. Piss them off, and they'll let off an omni-directional explosion from their bodies that'll irradiate you to an even worse degree. Still trying to figure out how they do it. We've got theories that include massive.... wait. You asked what they were, and I told you. Sorry to drag that along."

Michael couldn't help but smile at the man. "Don't apologize, I'm here to hear that sort of thing. Talk like that shows significant knowledge of the ghoul condition. Am I to assume I'm in the presence of a doctor?"

"Doctor Barrows is the name, and this is my assistant Nurse Graves" he said, gesturing toward the second ghoul in the room. "And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"

"I'm Michael, and this is Sarah. I've come because I hear you can enlighten me on ghoul physiology, most specifically the transformation from human to ghoul and the possibilities of reversing it."

Visibly shaken by the request, Barrows walked back to the desk where Graves was still seated. The two ghouls whispered amongst themselves for several minutes, both communicating too quietly for Michael to hear. Just as the wanderer was about to interrupt, the healers turned back to their guests. "Assuming I know the answers, why do you need to know?"

The wanderer's face dimmed slightly as he searched for the right words. After realizing that no doctor could cure a patient if they didn't know what was wrong, he settled on the truth. "I was hit by a lot of radiation a while back. I survived long enough for them to pump me full of drugs and save me, but apparently my genetic code got twisted around in the process. Carrying low levels of radiation actually heals me to a degree. I'm worried that this little ability might not be all I got from my exposure."

Both doctor and nurse sprang across the room, instantly on their new patient. Questions flew at him faster than he could answer, and he was hard pressed to cooperate with their demands.

"Take off your armor!"

"Have you been experiencing any loss of feeling in your extremities?"

"Hold still, we'll need a blood sample."

"Exactly how much radiation did you take?"

"How far have your tested your new ability to heal?"

"Have any infections shown up since you took the dose of radiation?"

"Hold still, we need another blood sample."

"Have you lost any hair at all?"

"I said hold still!"

After a barrage of unusual tests and examinations, Michael found himself face up on a bed with stained sheets, stripped down to his underwear, two ghouls and one Sentinel standing over him. The doctor and nurse flew across the room as if they had wings, moving from one machine to another, depositing the different samples of skin and blood as they drew them. Nurse Graves moved back to the wanderer's pinpricked arm with another needle, only to be stopped by Sarah.

"Look at him! You've nearly knocked him out with your tests! Give us some answers already!"

Both ghouls stopped for a moment, silent until the doctor waved his nurse toward a machine that had just begun to buzz. He moved back to the bed that Michael was lying on. "Sorry, guess we got a little excited. We've been doing our research in secret for years, and we're nowhere near done, but curing someone who's only partway transformed.... that might be possible. Or at least just studying someone who's turning.... now that would advance our research significantly."

Sarah drew a sharp breath and exhaled slowly, leaving a slowly rising Michael to respond. "Can you tell me anything yet?"

The doctor turned back to another machine that was now beeping at a frantic rate. "You're definitely not a pure human, that's all I've got so far. It'll take a while to completely break down your DNA and determine if your condition is progressive or if it's ghoul related." He turned back around and motioned the wanderer to get up. "We'll need some imaging done to make sure nothing new is growing in you. You're lucky we've got an old MRI machine. Otherwise we'd have to...."

A sudden wave of ghouls burst through the doors of the Chop Shop, all frantically pulling something toward the nearest bed. The wanderer found his own dilemma eclipsed as the crowd parted to reveal a young woman in the previously empty bed. Red hair covered part of her blood stained face, while the rest of her figure was shrouded by a set of heavy combat armor with numerous holes and dents in it. He thought such a still figure had to be dead, but she was not, because a moment's touch brought forth the cry of "She's still got a pulse!" from Nurse Graves.

Doctor and Nurse went to work frantically, at a speed that surpassed even that they'd called upon only a few minutes ago. Most of the ghouls left the room, but Willow, the sentry that Michael and Sarah had met, was not one of them. Summoning the strength to move his tired form, he pulled himself from the bed and toward the sentry.

"What happened?"

Despite the lack of elasticity in a ghoul's skin, Willow's face had easily formed into that of a sad person, someone who felt like hell and didn't know what to do about it. Michael grabbed her hand, carefully squeezing the necrotic flesh, hoping to get her attention and make her feel better at the same time. Seconds passed, and eventually the female ghoul turned to him.

"She came around the corner of the building, barely standing. She lost consciousness before I got to her, but I managed to drag her to the doors before my arms fell off. The way the armor's dented, I'd say she took a sledgehammer to the torso, and that's on top of the bullets that penetrated her armor. Don't know how she's still alive, but if anyone can get her back to her rangers in one piece, it's Barrows and Graves."

"Her rangers?"

Willow nodded. "She looks like Reilly, and the label on her armor matches. They're practically celebrities in the Capital Wasteland. Don't you know about them?"

Michael furrowed his brow, calling on every drop of knowledge he'd eagerly absorbed from Silver on his first day in the wasteland. After a few moments he finally remembered.

"_Reilly's Rangers. Big badasses, take any job and win every time. They don't kill indiscriminately, and they're the only group I've heard of actually turning down jobs because they thought they were 'evil'. They only have a few members, maybe a half dozen or even less, versus most other groups having at least a few dozen or the Talon Company's hundreds, but they still hold the highest rank to most folks. If you're looking for angels in the wasteland, look for them. If you want to hire them, you'd best have at least ten thousand caps._"

"I've heard of them, just never actually seen one." The woman looked so fragile, so close to death. It reminded him of Amata, and he was forced to turn away. A burning mixture of sadness and hate, both at his love's death and the inadequacy that he believed allowed it to happen, drew him to pull his clothes back on and march out of the room before he knew what was happening. Sarah grabbed the doctor before she followed Michael.

"We'll be back by dark, tell me you'll have some more information by then."

"We'll get back to the tests once the woman is stable, no promises."

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He was halfway back to the entrance, his assault rifle in his hands, when Sarah finally caught up to him. With a single hand she spun him around and pulled him to her by the collar. "Explain."

"Get ready to kill super mutants. We're going after that dish now."

"I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about how you stormed out of there."

He paused for a moment, once again tossing the truth back and forth in his mind. "I'll tell you someday. For now, I want you to gear up and get ready to kill green giants."

They eyed one another for a moment, one wanting more conversation and the other wanting it to just end. Sarah folded before he did, and as she pulled her laser rifle from her back he smiled. It was time to do something simple. Something that he could fix now, without any real worry of failure. Kill mutants. He turned back toward the entrance before he heard a loud and obviously enunciated sigh. Turning a hundred eighty degrees for the third time, he tilted his head and waited for an answer.

"You've got to be kidding me. I gave you that damn rifle this morning, and you've already forgotten about it?"

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Pulling the weapon from the clamps on the bench, Winthrop and Tulip eyed their latest creation. The half-binocular made the state-of-the-art laser rifle look like a piece of junk, but the pair of ghouls had done their best, measuring and etching the lenses to perfection. The pair of power armored soldiers entered the door just in time to see Winthrop, the same blue-suited ghoul Michael had pinned to the floor only an hour ago, sighting the laser rifle toward the now not-so-empty doorway.

"You!"

"You!"

For a second there was only silence, then a burst of laughter went up from both the repairman and the wanderer.

"I should've taken way more than fifty caps for this job!"

"You're Winthrop? Now how am I supposed to trust that thing to shoot straight?"

Without another word, the two met each other in the middle of the room and exchanged bare hands for modified AER9. Michael looked down the sights of the weapon, happy to see the impression of a modern rangefinder imprinted inside his new scope. He pulled a microfusion cell from his backpack and inserted it into the power chamber, feeling even through his gauntlets the low vibration as the weapon's capacitor drew power.

Without any warning, Sarah snatched the weapon from Michael and gave it her own personal inspection. Ending with a long stare through the new scope, she turned the weapon around and presented it back to her partner, pausing long enough only to say "Looks good to me."

With a slight chuckle, the wanderer reattached the weapon to his back and walked toward the door. "Now we kill green people."

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Willow met the pair as they exited the store, and as the three made their way back toward the entrance to Underworld, the ghoul filled in the unmutated humans on the exact location of the Museum of Technology. With a thank you as their last civilized act, the power armored pair donned their helmets and crept around the corner of the building, eyes on the broken hills and trenches that the Brotherhood and mutants fought over constantly.

The fighting was surprisingly thin. As well, the optics in their helmets provided them with motion sensing and limited magnification, which made it easy to ambush large groups of super mutants and snipe smaller ones. In less than thirty minutes, the pair had only made a half mile trek, but they killed nearly two dozen of the monsters along the way. Though their enemies mostly wielded melee weapons, the duo did manage to acquire several assault rifles in decent condition. The largest challenge proved to be the last, as a group of five mutants had camped out on the front steps of the museum, too busy tearing apart a corpse to notice the two living humans behind a nearby bus shelter. A surprise assault might have worked normally, but two of the monsters had personal miniguns beside them, and the remaining were carrying Chinese assault rifles.

The radios in their helmet gave them a chance at a silent conversation, and after arguing between Sarah's plasma grenades and Michael's 40mm launcher, the Sentinel finally convinced the wanderer that they were too close to this group to waste his weaponry. With a toss that she'd practiced since she was a young child, the Sentinel lobbed the explosive device directly into the mass of mutants, landing almost perfectly on the torn body they were fighting over.

With a boom that reverberated from the nearby buildings, the grenade went off, consuming the super mutants in a green firestorm of high intensity plasma. Hundreds of secondary explosions went off as all of the mutant's extra ammunition discharged. Even knowing what they were, the wanderer flinched as he leaned around the corner and witnessed one of the mutants trying to crawl out of the lingering flames. Michael watched as for nearly a minute the surviving mutant tried to make its way inside the museum, but it failed to reach the doors before its body gave out. With half his heart filled with joy and the other half with disgust, he followed his partner straight to the new corpses. The ammunition had been detonated, the rifles melted, but the sheer size of the personal miniguns had partially shielded them from damage. Though neither worked, the possibility of using the parts to make one functional weapon escaped neither of them, and the heavy bundle was quickly strapped to Michael's back. After a sharp comment from Sarah about her partner's new lack of mobility, the duo made their way up the steps in front of them, quite happy for a pair who'd done nothing but visit museums and kill mutants all day long.

--------------------------------------------------

Bursting into the room like some type of post-modern S.W.A.T. team, the pair broke through the museum's front entrance, raking every moving object in the room with laser and rifle fire. Moving at a quick pace, the duo dropped the abnormal number of green monsters and proceeded to police the weapons scattered around the room. Combining their careful trek between the different museums with the recent slaughter in the museum's entryway, they had managed to acquire seven assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition alongside of the two miniguns from earlier, all while simply passing up the melee implements or the more damaged rifles. After carefully stashing their ungainly loot bundle not far from the entrance, the power armored pair swept the room for an unblocked exit. They found only one.

"I'm not going through there."

"What?" Sarah had almost become used to unusual twists from her new partner, but things were becoming worse each time. "Take a look at the exit on the balcony over there. Going through this exhibit is the only way through the wrecked sections of the museum."

"There must be another way."

Sarah lost her last bit of patience at that moment. "I don't give a shit about your emotional instabilities! If you can't walk through a vault mockup simply because you got kicked out of a real vault, then how the hell am I supposed to believe that you'll ever lead me to your old vault?"

Michael jerked back, surprised at Sarah's unusual response. With a smile not visible under his helmet, he took off with a quick run toward the vault exhibit, determined to prove himself to Sarah for some unknown reason. A quick series of thumps told him that a rather heavy piece of metal was trying to keep up with him, but another sound quickly stopped the both of them in their tracks.

"_Vault-Tec welcomes you to our new line of subterranean vaults, featuring...._"

In half a second they were back to back, weapons tracking every square centimeter of space around them. After another half second they lowered their weapons in unison, letting their laughter permeate the new silence as the automated tour cut off. Forgoing speech in favor of nods, the two affirmed their "good-to-go" status and proceeded deeper into the exhibit.

Sarah played the part of tourist well, asking questions of him at every point. Michael quickly found himself to be the new tour guide, and though at first he didn't like it, it did have a calming feeling to tell her about the different parts of the vault he'd been in. The impromptu reenactment of tour guide and guest took a turn for the worse when Sarah chose to ask a seemingly innocent question.

"Did you have a lot of friends in the vault?"

Memories of subsystems and generators disappeared, replaced by those of Tunnel Snakes, doctors, and the daughter of the overseer. "I was a security officer, so I sort of had to know everyone on a personal basis. I could have called most of the people in the vault my friend."

"Well, I didn't really mean that. I meant the others who were your age."

Each and every question drove another invisible spike into him, unleashing pain that he was unable to suppress. He gave a quick thanks for his helmet and its voice filters. "They used birth cycles to control population. Including me, there were only eight people in my generation. All the guys belonged to a stupid gang that one of them had started. It kind of made me a pariah. I was on neutral terms at best with them."

"Then what about the girls?"

He stopped for a moment, pretending to listen to the last speaker as they drew close to the end of the exhibit. He made up his mind just as the farewell speech drew to a close.

"Christine was a total bitch most of the time, but I think she was alright. Susie was a bit of a slut." He turned and looked at Sarah, hoping to catch her reaction, but the effort was futile thanks to her armor. "Nothing ever happened between her and me."

A moment's silence permeated the balcony as Michael tried to move on, but the curious Sentinel had to keep going. "Only two girls in a group of eight? What are the odds?"

Even without seeing her face, he knew what the woman was really saying. "Have you finally learned how to use sarcasm?"

"Are you proud of me?"

The stillness lasted for an eternity, broken only by the occasional creak or moan from the decrepit building. Sarah had caved too many times in their previous conversations; this time she wasn't in the mood to back down, especially on details that she felt she absolutely had to know.

"There was Amata. She was a good friend of mine."

"Just a friend?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"I have to. You've told me everything about the vault but the people inside it. So is this Amata why you want to get back in so badly?"

Their conversation was cut short by another creak sounded somewhere in the building, this time much closer than the previous ones. "Talk later!" he hissed harshly as the sound of footsteps became more and more apparent. The pair separated and took positions, watching the only other door on the balcony intently. After a few more moments of increasingly louder footfalls, a single super mutant opened the door. Despite the recent chatter between the two humans, there was no way for it to have heard the conversation without radio equipment. Though it was attracted by nothing more than an odd smell, the makeshift blackjack it carried was still ready in his hand as he entered the room. It saw the two humans for a moment, then lurched back to yell out to the others in the building. His voice was silenced before it began by two laser blasts and fourteen rounds of 5.56mm ammunition.

Holding a few seconds in case other mutants in the building heard the battle, the only two living humans in the building then proceeded toward the door the mutant had just opened. Even the threat of sudden death didn't seem to put a damper in Sarah's inquisitive attitude.

"Well, are you going to tell me now?"

"No, I'm not. That thing could've killed one of us. Don't ask me any more personal questions until we're in a bar."

---------------------------------------------------

"Sorry, I don't know."

"Not even for a hundred caps?" The man sitting next to Lucas had a dangerous air about him; most of the town's residents had either avoided the visitor or told him that the only place to ask questions was at the bar. But even there, no one seemed to want to speak with him about their newest resident. Not even the town's sheriff.

"I'm telling you that no one around here knows anything about him, the guy showed up out of nowhere a couple weeks ago. Didn't talk much about his past at all. Then he up and saved our town from crazies, nuclear bombs, and radiation poisoning. Said he liked the idea of staying here, but that he had to finish some stuff before he could settle down."

"And did he mention what that was?"

"How many times I gotta say no before it gets through your head?"

The man twitched just a little, not in any obvious manner, but anyone who'd lived their life in the wasteland knew that he was going for his weapon. Behind him, around him, seemingly everywhere in the building safeties disengaged with telltale 'clicks'. The sheriff gave the man next to him the widest smile he'd seen in a while.

"Better get used to taking insults if you're gonna walk into little towns and ask a lot of mysterious questions about their hero."

The man did his best to turn his grimace into a smile as he dropped a few caps on the counter. With one last swig from the shotglass in front of him, the man silently excused himself and went straight out of the bar.

Lucas said aloud what everyone in the building had already been thinking. "That guy's trouble."

Gob let out a short chuckle. "Of course he is. The bastard didn't even tip me."

-------------------------------------------------------

Finding the dish had been difficult, thanks mostly to the numerous blockages throughout the museum. But once they'd found a giant Delta IX rocket, they knew they were getting close to the lunar lander. Despite his urge to stay in the rocket's exhibit a little longer, Michael managed to keep up with Sarah as they rounded corner after corner in the museum's air and space section. After nearly reaching the end, wondering most of the while if perhaps their intel had been wrong, they both found the Virgo II lander sitting in a small room. What they also found were two super mutants, one carrying an assault rifle and the other a hunting rifle.

It was no contest at all, save for the fact that both of the humans were afraid to hit the dish. But a few moments of sidestepping was all that was needed, and their power armor was more than enough to shield them from their attackers. After the final piece of green meat hit the floor, the two adventurers, awestruck by their proverbial pot of gold, proceeded toward the lander, oblivious to the sounds near them, unaware that a strange mutant was only a hall away.

The crash of the wooden door splintering into dust was enough to remove the two champions' attention from the prize at hand, but neither were fast enough to stop the mutant from firing. Three laser beams lanced out across the room, and all three struck true on the plates of Michael's power armor. Metal boiled away in the face of searing heat, exposing the inner workings of his armor to the monster's attacks. Again three beams lanced out with astonishing speed, and again they impacted his armor. Two of them hit unblemished plates, and their energy was wasted. The third hit a spot where the first blasts had already weakened his protection, and soon the beam of energy found itself burrowing not through metal, but flesh. Pain washed over the wanderer, and he dropped to the museum's floor, shattering tiles with his great weight.

Sarah's rifle lanced out at the mutant, pathetically coughing one laser beam to the mutant's three, but her aim was assisted by both practice and skill, and the single blast landed on the side of the creature's head. Flesh burned away, bone vaporized, and the mutant's head exploded as the fluids inside its brain case flash boiled. Pausing only for a moment to make sure her enemy was dead, the Sentinel dashed to her partner. His chest plate was twisted and mangled by the six energy beams that had hit it, but only one hole proceeded deep enough to touch his flesh. With all the speed of an angel of mercy, she produced several stimpacks and injected them directly into his wound. The pinprick of needles elicited no movement from Michael, and the only sound she heard was her own breathing.

In a moment's time she disengaged the clamps on his neck and removed his helmet, finding him to be unconscious but still breathing. She heaved a sigh of relief and allowed herself to fall down beside him. Pulling her own helmet off, she surveyed the room around her and once again looked at the dish attached to the lunar lander.

"That damn thing better work."

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The man walked out of the gates of Megaton nonchalantly, his pace just slow enough to concern the sniper standing guard. Few took a walk out of civilization and into the wasteland with such an unconcerned attitude. But then again, this was no ordinary man. Skipping the usual caravan trails and footpaths leading from Megaton, he instead proceeded toward the deserted ruins of Springvale and straight into one of the more intact buildings left in the town. The three remaining walls and half-ceiling were a decent enough hiding place for the two remaining members of his unit, given that no one in Megaton seemed to concern themselves with the old town. Standing as he approached, the two handed a black set of combat armor to him, which he eagerly put on over the old civilian's clothes he was wearing.

"Get anything good sir?"

"Listen in on my report." The newly reminted Talon Company mercenary left his two colleagues and proceeded to activate the old shortwave radio they'd brought with them.

"Command, this is recon four. Command, do you copy?"

Big enough to occupy most of a backpack and difficult to maintain, the radios were only issued to select units. The lack of information on their newest target had demanded the attention of an entire recon team, and the need for this information to be delivered quickly had demanded that they be issued one of the company's few radios.

"This is Command. Report on new target."

"Negative on presence in Megaton. Target purchased a dwelling inside the city walls, but was not in it. All evidence indicates he has left, but current whereabouts and intentions are unknown. Townsfolk unusually quiet about this one. Target seems to have cleaned the town and united them in a sense. My guess is they're protecting him."

The radio crackled quietly as a few seconds went passed. The figure on the other end was clearly not pleased, and it was likely that no one else of rank would be pleased either when they heard this. "Recon four, explain how you mean he 'cleaned' the town."

"Local bar's owner dead, replaced by owner's slaves. Town cult disbanded, several members dead. The local resident known as Jericho, the one who's sold information about the town to us quite liberally, is confirmed dead. All kills seem to be attributed to the target. He also appears to have disarmed the town's nuclear weapon permanently and relocated the radioactive core outside of the city."

"Very well. Consider your current mission to be delayed, we have another issue at hand. Join up with team seventeen at Farragut West Metro and get their scouting report on possible camp locations near the northwestern ruins boundary. Command out."

Recon four's leader winced as Command blatantly advertised the new rendezvous point over the radio. Sure, almost no one in the wasteland had radios that received encrypted signals. And the ones that did were mostly Brotherhood, which meant they didn't have the time to ambush teams of mercenaries. But there was always a chance that someone else was listening. That someone could easily hate Talon Company; most people did anyway. Making a mental note to request that some type of verbal encryption of map coordinates be devised, he turned toward his team to find that they'd already begun to pack what little gear they'd withdrawn earlier that day. With luck, they might be able to reach Farragut before nightfall. A six person camp could organize better security than three.

---------------------------------------------------------

It hurt a lot. But he wasn't sure exactly what it was. He opened his eyes to find his helmet removed and his armor in an unbelievable state. Everything else looked alright, but his chest looked as though he'd taken a blast from a fat man launcher. Metal was twisted and distorted; he counted five holes in his armor. Pulling himself to a sitting position, he noticed Sarah standing against the wall nearby, a strange rifle in her hand.

"The Brotherhood's only got a few of these. I don't know how that mutant found it or figured out how to use it, but it's a good thing we stopped him. This much firepower is bad news."

She held the strange weapon up for him to see. It looked like a laser rifle, but it was much shorter. The metallic sheen of every other laser rifle he'd seen was replaced by a dull black coat of paint. Instead of one large barrel, it appeared to have three smaller ones contained in its housing.

"It's a tri-beam laser rifle. But enough about our latest acquisition, how are you feeling?"

"Like I got shot more than three times. How about you?"

A rare smile peeked onto her face for a moment, disappearing quickly as her soldier's attitude returned. "Fine. Can you move?"

Michael stood up slowly, feeling the protests and groans from the motors in his compromised armor all the way. With a quick nod, he turned toward the large dead mutant near the destroyed doorway. Its disfigured head appeared to have had a grenade shoved in its mouth.

"Nice work on that thing. Is it just me, or is it bigger than the other ones?"

She nodded. "We call 'em Overlords. Only the Behemoths are rarer. These ones always carry the best gear. Saw a recon tape once where one of them robbed a smaller mutant of a rocket launcher it found. They're the closest thing the mutants have to leaders. If any of them have any intelligence, it'd be them."

"Good thing it's dead then." He turned his attention toward the lunar lander and noticed that someone had detached the communications dish from the lander while he slept. It certainly hadn't just been pulled off the machine; the neat support protrusions and lack of scrapes or dents told him that someone had certainly took their time. "How long was I out and what did I miss?"

"A couple of hours. It's almost dark, I thought about dragging you out of here if you didn't wake up soon. As for what you missed, once I was sure you were going to make it, I swept the closest rooms and started working on our new dish."

"Where is it?"

With a silent motion of her finger she told him to look back to his former resting place. Less than a meter away from the imprint where he'd fell was his gear, and balanced on top of it all was a Virgo II communication dish.

"You must've hit the ground harder than I thought. Can you make it back to the Underworld? It's a lot safer to rest there."

With a grunt as his choice of responses, he quickly hoisted both his gear and the dish to his back, then pulled his rifle from the ground. She nodded her agreement and led him back along the path they'd used to get this deep into the museum. The speakers on the vault tour started playing in reverse, starting with the farewell that had intruded on their earlier conversation about his friends in the vault. He smiled for a moment as he thought about how Butch was still carrying on the Tunnel Snakes, disrupting everyone's lives with his useless posturing and empty threats. He remembered that Alphonse was likely free now, and allowed himself to wonder if the man had managed to make himself overseer again.

His lower half stopped suddenly as he ran into an exhibit featuring part of the vault's water purification system. The case may not have been intact, but the shards of glass left were more than enough to agitate his wounds as his open chest plate made contact with the base of the exhibit. After a sharp yell of pain, he pushed himself off the case and tried to extract the clear razors from himself. The armored gauntlets proved to be too big to reach inside the holes. He looked up to find his Sentinel partner standing less than a meter away. Though her face was hidden, her mood showed through her intact armor.

"Stop your reminiscing and concentrate on getting back alive. Your armor's compromised enough that just about anything will kill you."

"Sorry, I was just..."

"Shut up and consider yourself lucky I can't turn you in for dereliction of duty. Now focus!"

He chose to not respond, answering her with only a nod. With gritted teeth he followed her back out of the museum, holding his mouth every time he felt the glass shards shift in his muscle tissue. He nearly screamed at the entrance when Sarah chose to shift their weapons cache onto his back, but again he made sure that he didn't say a word. The weight of the broken miniguns pushed down through his armor, forcing him to occasionally flex to readjust the weight, but not a sound came out of his mouth. He knew he'd been acting like a child in that vault exhibit, and he wasn't about to show any more signs of weakness.

"A soldier is ever vigilant." he heard over his helmet's radio. "A soldier always knows what's going on around them." He didn't bother responding, simply choosing to play follow the leader. The path, having been cleaned only a few hours earlier, was clear of mutants all the way back to the metro station where their day in the Mall district had started. But when they finally neared the Washington monument, he found her veering off toward the museum. After a short crackle, another useful piece of advise came over his radio. "A soldier also chooses the right spot to rest when they get wounded. Our base at the monument is equipped for triage only, you'll be needing an actual doctor for a complicated wound like that."

Rounding the side of the Museum of History, the pair ran into a distant Willow who, just as she had that morning, raised her laser rifle and challenged the newcomers. Two removed helmets and a weak wave later, the Sentinel and wanderer were both inside the museum, striding toward the Chop Shop like nothing else mattered. Doctor Barrows met them at the door, and within moments he and his nurse had stripped Michael bare and forced him onto a bed just as they'd done earlier that day.

"Hmmm... doesn't look too bad. You did a good job with the stims. It'll take a bit of work to extract all this glass though."

"The other girl's okay now?" Michael stole another look over at the woman Willow had called Reilly, seeing her asleep on a bed in the corner. Her combat armor was gone, replaced by a tattered set of wasteland attire, and her wounds were all bandaged, from the sledgehammer contusion all the way down to the scratches on her leg.

The doctor was visibly surprised at the question. "Of course she's fine. Someone as tough as Reilly can't die from a few super mutants. It'll be a few days before she can move again, much less do anything. We've sent our resident scout to check out their compound, try to get a message to the other rangers. Hopefully they're okay. I hate to think they might be in trouble."

Just as he began to formulate a question about the others in Reilly's Rangers, he felt a sharp pinprick in his arm. His head turned to see Nurse Graves injecting a syringe of med-x into his arm.

"We'll have you in fighting shape by tomorrow morning, I promise. But me and the doctor are going to have to do some surgery if you want that wound properly fixed. Even with the hydraulics in your armor, I'm surprised you could walk in here."

"Wait..." He shook his head, fighting the medicine as it began to seep through his body. "Did you learn anything about my condition yet?"

The doctor walked back to the bed and leaned over him. "There are only twenty-four hours in a day! I'd only finished with Reilly's wounds a little while ago when you two came back in! Now rest, we'll talk more tomorrow."

Turning his head to flash a quick smile in Sarah's direction, he then closed his eyes and let himself drift to sleep, content in the day's performance, glad to realize he'd soon have the information he'd need.

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"Commander, recon four has reported in on the status of team seventeen. They're dead."

Virtually unknown outside the Talon Company and known to their lower ranks only as Commander Jabsco, the pale man turned away from the tactical discussion he was having with his lieutenants.

"What killed them?"

"All three had laser burns on their armor and bodies. One had taken a projectile, believed to be 5.56mm, to the knee."

"Very well. They should have known better than to engage the Brotherhood without heavy weaponry."

"The report indicates it may not have been Brotherhood members that killed them sir."

The frown on Jabsco's face turned into a grimace. "Why?"

"Even ignoring the projectile, the bodies were stripped of anything valuable. Brotherhood members have never shown any interest in the weaponry or possessions of our squads, except for the energy weapons carried by some of our elite teams."

"I suppose you forget that a scavenger may have found the bodies before we did? No matter, the attacker is irrelevant. They allowed themselves to be killed and received the proper reward for their failure. File their deaths and pass the team's status on to Training. Tell them I expect to have a list of their best candidates by tomorrow morning. I want team seventeen active again by the end of the week. Dismissed."

With a salute and turn, the messenger walked back out of the room, leaving the commander back in an increasingly uneasy situation. Recruitment was down, casualties were up, and there simply weren't as many paying jobs out there as there were twenty years ago. The wasteland was a harsh place, even for the mercenaries.

With a sharply drawn breath, the commander launched back into his discussion of the latest contracts and their progress. Of particular interest was the lack of detail, be it from the employer or from the company's scouts, on the latest contract from Tenpenny tower. This "Michael" had seriously pissed off either Tenpenny or one of his associates, but the boy seemed to be almost nonexistent. No past, only known residence or acquaintances were recent acquisitions in Megaton, and he seemed to have disappeared from the small town. They either were protecting him or honestly didn't know more about the fellow. He allowed himself to wonder if this mysterious man could have killed team seventeen.

Ludicrous. A single man against three heavily armed mercs, and Talon mercs at that? No, they'd just run afoul of the Brotherhood, as had several teams before them. Making a note with his intelligence officer for increased surveillance and questioning in regard to this Michael character, he retreated an hour later to bed, still deep within the old military fort the Talon Company called home. Tenpenny had been a loyal and constant customer for many years; they'd always given high priority to his contracts, and this time would be no different. Michael's body would soon be in the dirt, and his head on a silver platter in Tenpenny Tower.

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His first day with Sentinel Lyons may not have gone exactly as planned, but they've at least gotten what they came for. Installing a dish shouldn't be a problem, but will the doctor have good news for Michael tomorrow? Or will his work on Reilly compel him to delay his tests on the wanderer? And what of Reilly? Can she be of any help to the wanderer? And what of his primary objective, his overwhelmingly impossible quest to find his father? Tune in next time, on Wasteland Sheriff!


End file.
